The  Library  and  the 


Librarian 

Pearson 


fi  ^^1  III 

~o  ocoo)     in 

llf  H~roB!H|(v'lfJ 

LT^  vIX  fw^lBMiti 

W%0 

* 

WP'S&jP 

^Vv^.n^v\^B 

^^■^^^^^^s^*^ 

m 

^^^^^» 

jjBfe\ 

THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


To  Sally 


The  Library  and  the  Librarian 

A  selection  of  Articles  from  the  Boston 

Evening  Transcript  and  other 

Sources 

By 
Edmund  Lester  Pearson 


The  Librarian's  Series 

Edited  by 

John  Cotton  Dana  and  Henry  W .  Kent 

Number  two 


Published  by 
The  Elm  Tree  Press    Woodstock   Vermont 
1910 


E.TRANSCRIPT'S  LIBRARIAN 

To  thk  Editor  of  the  Library  Journal: 

The  announcement  that  Mr.  Edmund  Lestec 
Pearson,  has  severed  his  connection  with  the 
Boston  Evening  Transcript  will  not  cause  un- 
alloyed grief  among  library  workers  in  New 
England.  While  the  "Librarian"  has  caused 
some  amusement  among  library  workers,  be- 
cause of  his  caustic  criticism  and  pessimistic 
attitude  in  general  toward  all  matters  of  library 
administration,  a  great  deal  of  harm  has  really 
been  done  among  the  loyal  friends  of  the  pub- 
lic library  who  were  not  acquainted  with  Mr. 
Pearson.  Those  who  are  engaged  in  the  actual 
administration  of  library  affairs  have  under- 
stood his  pessimistic -frame  of  mind,  but  among 
library  trusfees  and  those  to  whom  we  look  for 
support  and  co-operation  in  carrying  on  the 
work  of  the  library,  his  articles  have  had  a  most 
pernicious  effect,  and  have,  to  a  very  large  ex- 
tent, been  instrumental  in  delaying  library 
progress  all  through  New  England,  or  perhaps, 
I  might  say,  within  the  circle  of  influence  of 
the  Boston  Evening  Transcript. 

The  majority  of  trustees  are  interested  in  li- 
brary work,  and  when  once  appointed  naturally 
wish  to  acquaint  themselves  with  the  work  and 
details  of  their  respective  institution,  and  of  the 
organization  as  a  whole.  A  weekly  library  let- 
ter in  any  newspaper  would  attract  their  at- 
tention and  they  would  consequently  be  influ-' 
enced  by  what  they  read.  The  more  important 
the  paper,  the  greater  the  influence  of  its  arti- 
cles. What  has  appeared  in  the  Transcript  has 
been  accepted  by  the  great  majority  of  trus- 
tees as  authoritative  and  serious,  without  any 
question,  and  not  as  an  attempt  at  humor  (real 
New  Englanders  do  no  consider  the  Transcript 
a  humorous  paper).  It  might  be  well  to  state, 
for  the  benefit  of  those  who  do  not  know,  al- 
tho  no  one  could  be  more  aware  of  the  fact 
than  Mr.  Pearson,  himself,  that  the  Boston  Even- 
ing Transcript  is,  in  a  sense,  the  New  England 
Bible  and  is,  perhaps,  a  part  of  New  England 
conservatism  which  people  living  "outside  the 
realm  of  light"  do  not  understand  but  fre- 
quently criticise.  What  one  reads  in  the  Tran- 
script is  accepted  as  so,  even  if  Mr.  Pearson  did 
write  it.  But  our  trustees  never  knew  of  the 
personality  of  the  author  of  the  "librarian"  and 
therefore  have  been  unable  to  make  the  neces- 
sary allowance  for  his  warped  and  distorted 
point  of  view.  As  a  special  article,  appearing 
regularly  in  the  Transcript,  it  was  naturally  as- 
sumed  that  the  writer  was  of  the  same  broad- 
mindedness  that  is  characteristic  of  newspaper 
men  and  "special  contributors."  An  occasional 
(ling  would  have  been  appreciated  and  enjoyed, 


z 


NOTE 

All  but  two  of  these  articles  have  appeared  in  "  The  Librarian  " 
department  of  the  "  Boston  Evening  Transcript ".  My  thanks  are 
due  that  newspaper  for  permission  to  reprint  them.  They  are 
given  here  with  no  important  changes,  except  that  articles  relating 
to  the  same  subject  have  sometimes  been  combined,  instead  of 
being  presented  in  the  order  in  which  they  first  appeared. 

Of  the  other  two  articles,  "  The  Children's  Librarian  versus 
Huckleberry  Finn  ",  was  first  printed  in  "  The  Library  Journal  " 
and  that  periodical  has  very  courteously  given  consent  to  its 
republication.  "An  Amateur's  Notions  of  Boys'  Books n  was  read 
at  the  convention  of  the  American  Library  Association,  at  Lake 
Minnetonka.Minn.,  June,  1 908.  I  am  indebted  to  the  Publishing 
Board  of  the  Association  for  permission  to  use  it  here. 

E.  L.  Pearson. 
Newburyport,  Massachusetts 
December,  1909 


but  continuous  knocking  showed  that  the  writer 
was  either  disappointed  in  his  ambitions,  or  was 
"rocking  the  boat"  out  of  pure  "cussedness." 
His  satiric  criticism  on  practically  all  library 
matters,  state  clubs,  and  the  national  associa- 
tion, has  had  serious  effect,  thereby  influencing 
many  in  taking  a  decided  stand  against  these 
organizations.  Their  impressions  have  been  no- 
ticeable in  important  matters  recommended  by 
the  American  Library  Association. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  Mr.  Pearson  could  not 
have  directed  his  facile  pen  in  a  more  construc- 
tive line.  He  would  then  have  rendered  a 
service,  during  the  past  fourteen  years,  of  in- 
estimable value  to  the  library  movement  in  New 
England. 

Herbert  W.  Fison, 

Public  Li6rorr4-lfiB2^0 
Maiden,  Mass. 


CONTENTS 


Page 

The  Librarian  in  Fiction      .... 

1 

Librarians  and  Readers        .... 

7 

098 

.     14 

The  President  of  the  Board 

.     23 

The  Children's  Librarian  versus  Huckleberry  Finn 

.     26 

The  Catalogue  Beautiful      .... 

.     33 

Mrs.  Pomfret  Smith 

.     38 

Myth 

.     40 

Poem,  by  Miss  Patterson     .... 

.     43 

"  That  Girl  at  the  Library  "... 

.     45 

The  Man  Behind  the  Encyclopedia 

.     55 

An  Amateur's  Notions  of  Boys'  Books 

.     64 

The  Square  Peg         ..... 

.     74 

1  Meeting  the  Public  " 

.     79 

THE  LIBRARIAN  IN  FICTION 


The  librarian  has  never  played  a  thunderous  part  in  history. 
More  inglorious,  even,  than  the  schoolmaster,  he  has  usually  been 
between  decks  with  the  women  and  children  whenever  there 
was  trouble — so  far  as  any  record  of  him  is  obtainable.  On  him 
have  fallen  the  jeers  and  jests  reserved  for  the  bookworm  and 
the  recluse. 

Even  today  he  is  often  regarded  as  one  who  must  somehow 
be  lacking,  that  he  should  by  this  choice  of  profession  deliber- 
ately set  a  limit  on  his  money-making  possibilities.  Too  often 
there  seems  a  need  for  a  reargument  of  the  thesis,  so  passion- 
ately asserted  by  many  of  the  calling,  "  That  the  Librarian  may 
also  be  a  Human  Being."  One  writer  has  objected  to  the  wide- 
awake kind,  and  pleaded  for  a  return  to  the  half-asleep  and 
covered-with-moss  sort  of  librarian ;  but  he  is  a  literary  person, 
himself,  and  of  course  peculiar.  It  is  with  the  writers  of  fiction 
that  librarians  have  their  quarrel.  Only  here  and  there  do  they 
figure  in  novels  and  tales,  but  never  in  a  pleasing  light. 

There  is  Doctor  Gotthold  in  "  Prince  Otto."  He  is  treated 
ungraciously  all  the  way  through,  and  finally  left  alone  on  the 
scene  as  a  secret  tippler — the  worst  kind,  without  the  excuse 
of  conviviality,  or  the  generosity  to  provide  another  bottle  of  wine 
for  a  companion. 

It  is  a  far  cry  from  the  Principality  of  Gruenewald  to  Exeter, 


THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 


N.  H.,  but  the  librarian  profits  not  at  all  from  the  journey.  He 
is  still  fair  game  for  annoyance.  Mr.  Shute,  in  the  "  Real  Diary 
of  a  Real  Boy",  thinks  it  amusing  to  enter:  "  Dec.  23.  Satur- 
day and  no  skating ;  went  down  to  the  library  to  get  a  book  for 
Sunday,  me  and  Beany  were  sticking  pins  into  the  fellers  and 
making  them  holler  and  Jo  Parsons  the  librarian  jumped  rite  over 
the  counter  and  chased  us  way  down  to  Mr.  Hams  coffin  shop, 
he  dident  catch  us  either."  Then  the  graceless  wretch  goes  on 
to  tell  that  he  went  to  the  house  of  some  other  imp  and  borrowed 
a  dime  novel — neglecting  the  opportunities  of  the  public  library 
and  the  improving  conversation  of  Rollo  and  Jonas,  for  the 
adventures  of  "  Deadwood  Dick". 

In  "  Golden  Fleece  ",  David  Graham  Phillips  sends  one  of  his 
characters  to  a  public  library.  He  does  have  the  courtesy  to  say 
that  the  attendants  were  polite  and  obliging,  but  he  spoils  this 
by  characterizing  the  only  one  mentioned  at  length  as  a  busy- 
body and  gossip-monger,  and  he  finally  refers  to  his  "  fat  pasty 
face  with  its  drapery  of  soft,  scant  gray  whiskers". 

Dr.  Weir  Mitchell,  in  his  story  of  "The  Mind- Reader ", 
turns  his  hero  from  the  medical  profession  into  the  position  of 
assistant  librarian  in  a  curious  kind  of  library.  He  intimates  that 
the  position  is  what  is  sometimes  (  regrettably  )  termed  a  "  cinch  ". 
The  hero  seems  to  have  nothing  to  do  except  engage  in  pursuit 
of  criminals — one  of  whom  comes  in  the  library,  by  the  way,  to 
learn  how  to  dispose  of  stolen  wills.  As  this  assistant  librarian 
hires  private  detectives  and  distributes  five-dollar  tips,  the  infer- 
ence is  plain  that  he  has  some  illegitimate  doings  with  the  cash 
drawer.  As  for  the  chief  librarian,  both  author  and  illustrator 
have  employed  their  powers  of  satire  to  the  fullest  on  him. 
There  he  is,  with  moth-eaten  whiskers,  and  horn  spectacles, 
baggy  as  to  the  knees  of  his  trousers,  and  fussy  as  to  his  manners. 
He  tries  to  conceal  his  first  name,  always  signing  himself  "  D. 
Quarton."    But  it  presently  comes  out  that  his  given  name  is 


THE  LIBRARIAN  IN  FICTION 


1  Duodecimo.  n  His  father,  who  was  also  a  librarian,  gave  his  son 
this  name  because  he  thought  him  unusually  small  as  a  baby.  In 
the  general  distribution  of  wealth  that  takes  place  at  the  close  of 
the  story,  the  doctor  gets  a  fortune  and  turns  his  back  on 
library  work  immediately.  Everyone  gets  something  except 
poor  old  Duodecimo,  who  in  return  for  years  of  obsequiousness 
to  an  eccentric  millionaire  finds  himself  and  his  library  turned  off 
without  a  cent. 

Is  it  because  authors  are  sometimes  received  in  libraries  without 
the  reverence  which  their  vanity  requires  that  they  are  so  fond 
of  getting  in  a  dig  at  libraries  and  librarians  ?  Or  does  their  pride 
smart  because  some  one  of  their  books  has  not  been  purchased 
in  great  enough  numbers,  or  been  perhaps  excluded  altogether  ? 
At  any  rate,  many  of  them  take  pleasure  in  making  us  buy, 
catalogue,  and  issue  books  containing  the  most  preposterous  cari- 
catures of  our  calling  and  ourselves.  There  is  n  The  Jessup 
Bequest  "  by  Miss  Anna  Robeson  Burr.  Of  the  "  Chillingworth 
Library  "  in  her  book,  she  says,  "  The  catalogue  methods  of  the 
Chillingworth  Library  were  such  as  to  discourage  culture.  There 
was  a  catalogue,  a  time-worn  volume  in  microscopic  print,  wherein 
the  'Autobiography  of  Leigh  Hunt'  was  listed  under  'Anony- 
mous ',  and  Swedenborg's  '  Heaven  and  Hell ',  under  '  Work$ 
of  Imagination  and  Fancy '.  This  superannuated  authority  was 
backed  up  by  a  few  drawers  of  cards  in  which  the  letter  K  stood 
represented  by'  Keats,  John,  Life  and  Works  of,  61,  107, 
590,  A.  B.  2. '  If  you  could  remember  this  number  and  send  it  in, 
you  might  be  quite  sure  of  receiving  a  copy  of  Elsie  Dinsmore. '  " 

Having  spent  her  powers  of  sarcasm  on  the  catalogue  and 
other  furniture  of  the  library,  the  novelist  turns  to  the  people  who 
managed  it.  "  Behind  the  counter  presided  an  exhausted  librarian 
who  seemed  tacitly  to  echo  the  weary  cry  of  King  Solomon.  He 
was  aided  by  a  frantic  haired  boy  who  lived  in  a  chaos  of  half- 
remembered  digits  ;  and  on  holidays  by  a  pretty,  fluffy  girl  who 


4  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

told  you  when  you  asked  her  for  the  '  Phaedo  '  that  it  was  adver- 
tised but  not  published  yet !  " 

Of  all  the  comments  of  the  writers  of  fiction  upon  us  and  our 
trade,this  is  almost  the  coolest !  Leaving  the  abused  catalogue  out 
of  the  question,  one  is  impelled  to  ask  :  who  exhausted  the  poor 
old  librarian,  and  caused  him  to  think  that  of  the  making  of  books 
there  is  no  end  ?  Who  but  the  writers  of  fiction  ?  And  who 
gave  the  fluffy  girl  no  time  to  catch  up  with  the  Greek  classics, 
but  kept  her  dealing  out  the  latest  novels  from  dawn  till  dark  ? 
Was  it  the  other  librarians,  or  was  it  the  modern  novelists  ?  To 
speak  of  piling  insult  on  injury  is  all  too  tame  to  fit  the  case.  There 
is  nothing  to  do.but,  in  bitterness  of  heart,  and  with  a  deep,  abiding 
sense  of  wrong,  to  suffer  in  silence,  until  some  day  when  a  librarian 
shall  choose  one  of  his  colleagues  for  the  hero  of  a  story  which 
shall  represent  him  in  his  true  light,  struggling  against  n  the  on- 
slaught of  the  savage  hordes  of  the  Six  Best  Sellers  H. 

But  against  Miss  Josephine  Daskam  we  have  the  largest 
account  of  all.  In  "  A  Little  Brother  of  the  Books  "  she  assem- 
bles three  types — the  head  librarians  of  both  sexes  and  the  assis- 
tant— and  dismisses  them,  one  by  one,  in  terms  of  scorn  and  de- 
rision. The  male  librarian  apparently  slept  all  day  long,  left  the 
library  to  rack  and  ruin,  and  seems  to  have  been  discharged  for 
incapacity  and  laziness.  His  successor  is  a  most  detestable  type  of 
bluestocking  and  female  martinet,  a  devotee  of  red  tape  and  cast- 
iron  rules.  The  assistant  is  merely  a  vulgar  person  who  reads 
n  Molly  Bawn  ",  eats  caramels,  and  refers  to  the  theological  col- 
lection as  "  those  old  religious  books  ".  They  are  all  put  to  shame 
by  the  hero — a  small  boy,  who  proves  to  have  not  only  more  of 
the  milk  of  human  kindness,  but  a  juster  appreciation  of  literature  as 
well.  The  man  librarian  had  seen  this,  and  had  slept  in  peace, 
leaving  the  library  in  charge  of  the  infant.  The  lady  made  some 
righteous  attempts  to  alter  the  state  of  affairs,  but  finding  that  the 
readers  regarded  her  as  little  better  than  a  dragon,  succumbed 


THE  LIBRARIAN  IN  FICTION 


also.  It  is  a  satisfaction  to  record,  that  in  the  end,  the  boy-hero 
caught  some  disease  from  a  library  book  (another  slander)  and 
passed  beyond. 

After  these  distressing  pictures  from  fiction  it  is  best  to  look 
at  two  real  instances.  Over  the  first  it  is  unnecessary  to  linger.  In 
the  "  Lives  of  Twelve  Good  Men  "  anyone  can  read  of  "  Henry 
Octavus  Coxe  ;  the  Large-hearted  Librarian  ."  The  charm  of  that 
alliterative  title  is  alone  enough  to  convince  that  he  was  a  noble 
scholar  without  need  of  apology  or  defence.  The  other  character 
is  more  complex,  more  important  and  more  extraordinary.  That 
one  of  the  worst  rogues  and  absolutely  the  most  scandalous  rake 
who  ever  described  his  own  career  should  have  ended  his 
days  in  that  sancticity  which  surrounds  the  librarian's  calling  is 
a  paradox  as  delicious  as  it  is  unequalled.  It  illustrates  how  a 
repentant  sinner  chose  to  be  a  librarian  as  the  surest  means  cf 
grace.  The  doings  of  Giovanni  Jacopo  Casanova  de  Seingalt  are 
told  in  what  is  to  many  very  unedifying  reading,  but  at  least  they 
provide  a  definite  answer  to  the  question, "  Can  the  librarian  also 
be  a  human  being  ?  " 

One  author  says,  "  In  1  789,  Casanova  was  among  the  guests 
of  the  ambassador  of  Venice  at  Paris.  Another  of  the  guests  was 
Count  Walstein,  with  whom  he  fell  into  a  conversation  touching 
the  arts  of  magic  and  the  old  clavicula  of  Solomon.  Walstein, 
delighted  with  his  new  acquaintance,  offered  on  the  spot  to  make 
him  the  librarian  of  his  castle  in  Bohemia.  Casanova,  old,  poor 
and  weary  of  adventures,  grasped  at  the  proposal.  The  very  next 
day,  in  the  count's  company,  he  left  for  Castle  Dux,  near 
Toeplitz,  the  abode  in  which  he  was  to  spend,  in  peace  and  quiet- 
ness, the  fourteen  years  of  life  which  yet  remained  to  him.  A 
librarian  is  not  made  every  day  out  of  an  adventurer.  But 
Casanova's  character  was  strangely  mingled.  He  was,  as  a  par- 
rot had  summed  him  up,  a  rascal ;  he  was  a  mixture  of  Gil 
Bias,   Cagliostro  and  the  Wandering  Jew  ;    but  he  was  also  a 


6  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

scholar,  a  poet  and  a  wit.  To  the  count  he  was  in  every  way 
an  acquisition.  He  had  looked  with  his  own  eyes  on  every  side  of 
life  ;  he  was  the  prince  of  talkers  and  companions,  and  the  count 
and  the  gay  guests  who  thronged  the  castle,  were  never  wanting 
for  diversion,  when  Casanova  told,  across  the  wine,  or  round  the 
ingle,  the  many-colored  tales  of  his  career. " 


LIBRARIANS  AND  READERS 


"  Librarians,  "  said  someone,  "  librarians  are  the  people  who 
keep  you  from  getting  the  books  you  wish. " 

It  is  curious  that  the  notion  persists  of  the  librarian  as  a  modern 
dragon.  There  is  scarcely  a  public  library  which  does  not  know 
one  or  two  persons  who  are  constantly  in  trouble  with  its  rules. 
Like  the  politician  who  could  not  see  why  the  Constitution  should 
be  allowed  to  come  between  friends,  they  are  eternally  annoyed 
to  find  that  the  usual  regulations  apply  to  them  as  well  as  to  others. 
One  man  was  forever  sending  for  the  librarian  (  scorning  to  deal 
with  the  humble  assistant )  to  ascertain  if  he  must  really  obey  this 
or  that  rule.  He  was  disturbed  to  find  that  he  must,  and  finally 
ventured  the  opinion  that  the  librarian  was  a  "  bureaucrat n.  This 
sounding,  as  it  did,  of  St.  Petersburg  and  bombs,  was  a  terrible 
thing  to  call  a  man,  but  the  librarian  was  forced  to  put  up  with 
it. 

"  We  are  not  fond  of  making  rules, "  he  explained  ;  n  every  one 
we  make  is  so  much  more  trouble  for  us.  It  would  be  infinitely 
easier  if  we  could  put  all  the  books  in  a  heap  on  the  floor  and 
let  whoever  liked  take  what  he  pleased  for  as  long  as  he  desired. " 
The  explanation  was  probably  wasted.  If  the  vague  complaints 
against  librarians  could  be  boiled  down  into  the  brief  articles  of  an 
indictment,  some  of  them  would  probably  run  like  this :  First, 
that  no  book  is  ever  "  in  "  when  it  is  wanted  ;  second,  that  the 
librarian  sets  himself  up  as  one  having  authority  to  say  what  books 


8  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

people  shall  not  read  ;  third,  that  readers  asking  for  bread  in  the 
shape  of  books  are  frequently  offered  a  stone  in  the  form  of  a  card 
catalogue. 

These  accusations  are  more  or  less  familiar  to  everyone. 
There  is  some  ground  for  them,  though  it  would  be  preposter- 
ous to  blame  the  librarian  for  the  first.  His  share  of  responsibil- 
ity in  the  other  two  is  limited — or,  at  most,  a  matter  of  difference 
of  opinion.  Instead  of  going  over  well-ploughed  ground  and 
attempting  a  defence,  it  will,  perhaps,  be  more  entertaining  to 
consider  the  counter  charges  which  librarians  might  bring  against 
their  readers.  "  Might  bring n — for  as  a  matter  of  fact  they  seldom 
or  never  do  bring  them.  It  is  a  well-recognized  convention  for 
a  librarian  to  represent  his  clientele  as  composed  entirely  of  reason- 
able and  serious  minded  folk.  The  motives  for  this  may  not  be 
unmixed,  but  in  general  the  thing  does  not  show  to  the  discredit  of 
the  profession.  n  We  prefer,  "  they  seem  to  say,  "  to  speak  of  the 
sensible  people  whom  we  have  tried  to  satisfy,  rather  than  of  the 
occasional  crank  or  bore,  whom  no  one  could  please.  " 

A  discussion  of  these  latter  gentlemen  does  not  belong  here. 
They  are  not  peculiar  to  libraries :  they  occur  everywhere. 
There  are,  however,  three  classes  of  people  whose  reform  would 
rejoice  the  hearts  of  librarians.  It  is  significant  of  the  fact  that  the 
complaint  is  not  a  bitter  or  illnatured  one  when  it  appears  that  the 
reformation  would  simply  permit  libraries  better  to  serve  these 
persons.  They  are,  then,  the  reader  who  will  not  ask  for  what 
he  wants  ;  the  one  who  does  not  want  what  he  asks  for  ;  and  the 
one  who  desires  imaginary  books. 

Speaking  of  the  first  of  these  classes,  Mr.  William  Warner 
Bishop,  the  superintendent  of  the  reading  room  of  the  Library 
of  Congress,  said  recently :  "We  could  devote  an  hour  to  telling 
the  experiences  which  we  all  have  had  in  arriving  at  that  most 
elusive  object  of  inquiry — the  thing  a  reader  really  wants  to  know 
about.  The  chief  art  of  a  desk  assistant  or  a  reference  librarian 


LIBRARIANS  AND  READERS 


is,  as  we  all  know,  the  knack  of  divining  by  long  experience 
what  is  actually  wanted  by  inquirers.  The  fact  that  so  few  readers 
will  ask  directly  for  what  they  want,  even  when  they  have  a  clear 
idea  of  their  needs — which  is  seldom  the  case — is  perhaps  a 
greater  obstacle  to  successful  reference  work  than  poor  equipment, 
poor  catalogues,  poor  bibliographies.  ' 

To  find  what  a  reader  really  wants  is  sometimes  a  little  like 
the  game  of  n  Twenty  Questions,"  and  the  reference  librarian 
might  well  begin,  on  occasions,  with  the  inquiry :  "  Is  it  animal, 
vegetable  or  mineral  ?  "  This  hesitation  of  the  reader  to  disclose 
his  real  needs  comes  from  shyness,  or  a  belief  that  he  is  saving 
the  librarian  trouble,  or  a  feeling  that  he  ought  to  be  ashamed 
not  to  know  where  to  look  for  the  thing  himself.  Often  he  begins 
far  off  in  his  inquiries — thousands  of  miles  away ;  and  works 
toward  his  real  object  by  almost  imperceptible  degrees.  At  other 
times  he  asks  a  number  of  wholly  unrelated  questions,  casting  a 
sort  of  fog  over  the  situation,  and  then  suddenly  springs  his  real 
inquiry  like  an  attorney  during  cross-examination. 

An  instance  of  the  first  of  these  methods  occurred  when  a 
woman  came  into  a  reference  library,  leading  a  small  boy  by  the 
hand.  "  Have  you  any  books  of  travel  ?  "  she  asked.  They  had 
— about  twenty  or  thirty  thousand,  though  the  reference  librarian 
did  not  say  that.  He  merely  replied  in  the  affirmative  and  asked 
what  she  wished. "  Oh,  just  some  books  of  travel — haven't  you  got 
some  handy  ?  What  are  those  over  there  ? "  "  Those  over 
there  "  were  a  miscellaneous  assortment  of  new  books,  and  there 
were  some  which  described  travels.  "  She  is  a  casual  reader,  " 
thought  the  librarian,  n  come  in  to  while  away  an  hour",  and  he 
brought  her  four  volumes — the  latest  South  Polar  expedition, 
somebody's  adventures  in  Tibet,  a  work  recounting  pleasures 
and  perils  in  British  Guiana,  and  a  very  much  illustrated  book 
about  the  missions  of  Southern  California.  With  these  the  two 
readers  retired  to  a  table,  and  began  turning  over  the  leaves  at 


10  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

great  speed.  The  woman  soon  returned  to  the  reference  desk, 
but  as  it  chanced  to  be  a  busy  hour  she  had  to  wait  a  few  minutes 
while  the  reference  librarian  listened  to  the  complaints  of  an 
old  gentleman  who  had  found  that  some  miscreant  had  cut  out 
a  picture  from  the  Scientific  American — an  act  of  vandalism 
which  sadly  interfered  with  his  enjoyment  of  the  other  side  of  the 
page.  After  him,  in  order  of  precedence,  came  a  little  girl  who 
said  that  the  "  teacher  "  over  in  the  children's  room  had  told  her 
"  to  come  over  here  and  you  would  tell  me  how  I  can  address 
a  letter  to  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  so  he  will  get  it  all  right.  "  Then 
came  a  man  who  wanted  last  week's  Saturday  Evening  Post  as 
he  had  missed  that  installment  of  "  The  Firing  Line ",  and  then 
came  Mrs.  Homer  Maclay. 

Mrs.  Maclay  was  in  trouble  as  usual.  She  had  been  at  the 
library  early  that  afternoon  to  get  a  life  of  Watts — George 
Frederick  Watts,  you  know,  the  painter.  She  had  found  out 
that  he  was  Ellen  Terry's  first  husband  and  so  she  wanted  to 
read  about  him,  and  she  had  taken  out  a  book  that  she  had 
supposed  was  his  life,  and  then  gone  all  the  way  home  and  opened 
it  and  it  wasn't  about  Watts  the  painter  at  all,  but  Isaac  Watts 
the  hymn-writer,  and  she  had  brought  it  back,  and  the  young 
lady  out  at  the  desk  said  that  it  was  against  the  rule  to  return 
a  book  the  same  day  it  was  taken  out,  and  that  they  were  told 
they  must  not  break  the  rule,  and  so  she  came  in  here  to  see  if 
the  reference  librarian  couldn't  do  something  about  it.  She 
didn't  want  Isaac  and  she  did  want  George  Frederick,  and  it  had 
cost  her  two  extra  car  fares  and  all  this  trouble,  and  she  thought 
the  library  was  to  blame  anyhow,  or  that  boy  who  got  her  the 
book  was — why  didn't  he  find  out  which  Watts  she  was 
after  ?  And  she  certainly  didn't  intend  to  go  all  the  way  home 
again  with  this  old  Isaac.  The  reference  librarian  felt  very  sure 
that  Mrs.  Maclay  had  merely  asked  for  "  a  life  of  Watts,  "  and 
he  knew  that  Edgar,  the  fifteen  year  old  page,  did  not  profess 


LIBRARIANS  AND  READERS  11 

mind-reading,  nor  have  any  particular  interest  in  discriminating 
between  a  Watts  who  wrote  hymns  and  one  who  painted 
pictures.  Neither  of  them  was  on  a  league  nine,  and  both  of  them 
were  dead,  anyhow.  But  he  also  knew  that  in  the  end  Mrs. 
Maclay  would  get  what  she  wanted  and  it  was  best  to  give  in 
gracefully  at  the  start.  So  the  rule  was  broken,  as  rules  are  always 
broken  for  persons  who  make  themselves  sufficiently  obstreperous, 
and  Mrs.  Maclay  went  away  with  the  book  she  desired. 

All  this  time  the  travel  lady  was  waiting  impatiently.  n  Can't 
you  let  me  see  some  more  books  on  travel  ?  "  she  asked.  Certainly 
he  could,  and  four  or  five  more  were  fetched.  Lady  Cicely 
Waynflete's  "  Captured  by  the  Moors " ;  Dr.  Von  Hohen- 
sticker's  "Land  und  Leute  in  Samoa"  ;  a  motor  tour  in  Spain,  and 
so  on  and  so  forth.  These  entertained  her  and  her  son  for  half  an 
hour.  Then  she  returned  in  apparent  bad  humor.  "These  are 
not  what  I  want, "  she  remarked  shortly. 

The  librarian  thought  he  saw  his  chance.  "  What  do  you 
want  ?  "  he  inquired.  "  Some  books  on  travel — haven't  you  got 
any  others  ?  "  The  librarian  groaned  in  spirit.  He  saw  now  what 
he  had  to  deal  with — a  person  who  would  not  make  known  her 
specific  want,  but  would  waste  her  time  and  his  trying  to  achieve  it 
herself.  And  so  it  proved.  The  afternoon  wore  on  and  books  of 
travels  were  deposited  by  the  ton,  so  to  speak,  on  the  table  where 
the  woman  sat.  Finally  she  consented  to  narrow  the  field  by 
admitting  that  she  was  particularly  interested  in  Africa.  The 
resources  of  the  library  on  the  subject  of  that  continent  passed  in 
review  before  her  eyes.  She  grew  more  and  more  acid  in  her 
manner.  Finally  she  gathered  together  her  bag  and  her  boy,  put 
on  her  gloves,  and  sailed  down  the  room,  stopping  a  minute  at 
the  reference  librarian's  desk.  "  I  cannot  find  what  I  want ;  I  shall 
have  to  go  now. "  The  librarian  made  one  last  effort :  "  Just 
what  did  you  want  ?  "  he  asked.  The  woman  looked  at  him  in 
the  manner  of  one  imparting  the  most  delicate  family  secret.    "  My 


12  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

little  boy",  she  said  solemnly,  "  wished  to  see  a  picture,  a  large 
picture,  of  an  elephant.  He  wished  to  copy  it.  There  was  only 
one  in  all  those  books,  and  it  was  very  small.  I  am  very  much 
surprised,  and  Leander  is  disappointed  ".  The  librarian  moaned 
aloud  as  he  took  a  large  volume  on  zoology  from  a  shelf  nearby. 
He  silently  exhibited  a  very  fine  elephant,  indeed.  The  lady 
said  :    "Well,  it  is  too  late  now  ",  and  out  she  went. 

n  Now  why  ",  asked  the  librarian,  addressing  the  ceiling  of  the 
reading-room,  "  why  couldn't  she  have  told  me  that  in  the  first 
place  ?  Why  is  it  a  base  and  shameful  thing  to  desire  a  view  of 
an  elephant  ?  Why  was  it  only  extorted  from  her  at  the  eleventh 
hour  ?"  And  he  called  Edgar,  the  lightning  page,  and  set  him 
at  work  carrying  off  the  one  hundred  and  fifty  volumes  of  the 
elephant  lady's  books,  as  a  punishment  for  not  having  divined 
the  unspoken  thought  of  Mrs.  Homer  Maclay  in  regard  to 
Watts. 

The  reader  who  does  not  ask  for  what  he  wants,  and  the  one 
who  does  not  want  what  he  asks  for  are  frequently  combined  in 
the  same  person.  The  traits  overlap.  A  man  came  into  a  read- 
ing-room one  evening  and  asked  if  there  were  any  "essays" 
there.  "  I  don't  suppose  you've  got  any  essays  here,  have  you  ?" 
was  the  form  of  his  inquiry.  Yes,  they  had,  Macaulay's  and 
Emerson's  —  would  he  like  to  see  them  ?  No,  not  those,  exactly. 
Some  others,  then  ?  Yes,  some  others.  Whose,  please  ?  Oh, 
just  some  essays.  So  essays  were  brought.  But  they  failed  to 
please,  and  finally  the  man  brought  them  back.  He  drew  near 
the  librarian.  "  To  tell  the  truth  ",  he  remarked,  as  though  there 
were  a  strong  temptation  to  lie  about  it,  "  what  I  want  is  '  Quo 
Vadis', — have  you  got  that?  " 

The  reader  who  wants  imaginary  books  appears  in  various 
forms.  Sometimes  he  is  of  that  familiar  type,  dear  to  the  heart 
of  all  librarians,  who  wants  "  a  red  book."  Or  it  may  be  "  a 
brown  book",  but  that  is  the  limit  of  his  information  about  it. 


LIBRARIANS  AND  READERS  13 

He  had  it  a  year  ago,  and  he  wants  to  read  it  again.  What 
was  the  title  ?  That,  he  doesn't  remember.  Who  wrote  it  ?  Oh, 
he  never  knew  that.  What  was  it  about  ?  Oh,  about  a  lot  of 
things  ;  it  was  full  of  information.  He  does  wish  he  could  get  it. 
You  must  have  it  around  here,  somewhere  —  it  was  about  so 
high.  And  he  indicates  with  his  hands  the  not  very  unusual 
height,  known  (in  old  times)  as  "duodecimo". 

Some  time  or  other  there  will  be  a  librarian  with  a  testy 
disposition  and  a  strong  right  arm.  And  he  will  deal  with  this 
man.  The  accumulated  and  righteous  wrath  of  years  will  be 
visited  upon  him.  The  librarian  will  grab  him  by  the  throat  and 
run  him  back  to  the  nearest  wall,  and  bang  his  head  against  it  — 
hard.  "  You  wearisome  ass  ! "  he  will  say  :  "  suppose  you  went 
to  a  city  of  half  a  million  inhabitants,  and  went  up  to  a  police- 
man at  the  station  and  told  him  that  you  wanted  to  see  a  man 
who  lived  there.  And  that  you  didn't  know  the  man's  name,  nor 
his  house,  nor  his  business.  And  that  all  you  knew  about  him 
was  that  he  wore  a  blue  suit,  or  may-be  a  black  one,  and  that 
he  was  five  or  six  feet  tall.  Wouldn't  that  policeman  ring  for  the 
patrol  and  have  you  before  an  expert  in  lunacy  pretty  quick  ? 
Well,  here  goes  for  you  !  The  door  ?  No,  the  window,  by  the 
shade  of  Sir  Thomas  Bodley  !  Heads,  below,  there  ! "  And  out 
the  man  would  go. 

That  librarian  would  lose  his  job,  and  he  would  be  held  up 
to  reprobation  as  woefully  lacking  in  library  ideals,  and  he  would 
be  openly  denounced  everywhere.  But  five  thousand  of  his 
colleagues  would  gather  in  secret  and  they  would  send  him  an 
illuminated  address,  and  vote  each  one  to  give  a  month's  salary, 
and  thereby  they  would  collect  $900,  and  they  would  send  him 
that,  and  they  would  pray  for  him  every  night,  too. 


098 


In  spite  of  the  popular  belief  that  a  librarian  spends  most  of 
his  leisure  reading  the  fascinating  romances  which  his  library  has 
acquired  that  day,  there  are  times  when  I  find  the  evenings  a 
little  dull.  Take  last  Friday,  for  instance.  At  half-past  ten  I  was 
still  awake,  but  as  I  had  looked  through  four  auction  catalogues, 
seven  bookdealers'  lists,  and  a  vast  shoal  of  advertisements,  I  did 
not  regard  with  enthusiasm  the  three  numbers  of  the  "  Pub- 
lishers* Circular"  which  still  awaited  me.  I  would  have  glared 
at  them  if  I  had  not  been  too  sleepy  to  glare  at  all. 

Before  I  could  take  one  of  them  up,  however,  the  door  of  my 
room  opened,  and  a  man  came  in.  I  could  not  see  him  distinctly, 
as  the  only  light  in  the  room  was  on  my  desk.  He  stood  for  a 
moment  looking  at  me,  and  I  expected  that  he  would  apologize 
and  back  out.  The  apartment  house  in  which  I  live  has  dimly 
lighted  corridors,  and  it  is  not  unusual  to  have  people  mistake 
my  room  for  their  own.  Instead,  he  came  nearer  my  desk  and 
stood  looking  at  me.  He  was  an  inoffensive-looking  person,  as 
near  as  I  could  judge.  "  Would  you  like  to  see  my  books  ?  "  he 
asked.  I  told  him  that  I  never  buy  from  agents.  He  chuckled. 
"  I  haven't  asked  you  to  buy ",  he  replied.  "  I  doubt  if  you  could 
buy  them.  It  is  my  private  library  I  am  offering  to  show  you. 
You  won't  have  to  put  on  your  hat ; — it  is  in  this  building.  Will 


you  come 


?« 


I  did  not  remember  having  seen  the  man  before,  but  I  had  a 
fair  idea  what  he  wanted.  There  would  be  two  or  three  hundred 
more  or  less  dusty  volumes,  a  worn-out  encyclopaedia—  probably 
the  Britannica,  with  sheep  bindings  in  tatters — some  subscription 
sets,  and  a  few  books  which  he  would  impress  upon  me,  were 


098  15 

1  over  a  hundred  years  old."  Then  I  would  be  asked  to  make 
an  offer  for  the  lot.  He  would  have  an  exaggerated  notion  of 
their  value,  and  clearly  show  that  he  considered  me  a  thief, 
unless  I  named  a  figure  about  eight  times  that  for  which  they 
could  be  purchased  in  any  second-hand  shop.  As  always  hap- 
pens in  such  cases,  there  would  be  one  or  two  books  which  I 
should  be  glad  to  have,  but  as  he  would  sell  the  whole  lot  or 
none,  I  should  only  have  the  irritation  of  looking  at  them. 

However,  anything  was  better  than  straining  my  eyes  over 
the  "Publishers'  Circular"  just  then,  and  I  followed  him  out  of 
the  room.  He  went  to  the  elevator  and  rang  the  bell.  An 
astonishing  thing  happened,  for  the  car  shot  up  like  lightning. 
Now,  it  usually  takes  George  from  six  to  eight  minutes  to  wake 
up,  and  about  five  more  to  pull  the  lumbering  old  elevator  up  to 
my  floor.  George  was  a  new  man,  too — or,  at  least,  a  new  boy, 
for  he  had  on  a  brand  new,  bright  red  uniform.  We  got  in ;  and 
the  car  dropped  at  least  twelve  floors.  As  I  live  on  the  third  floor 
this  was  rather  disquieting. 

The  man  smiled  at  me.  "  I  suppose  you  suspect  that  I  am  the 
Devil  ",  he  remarked.  "  Worse  than  that ",  I  answered,  "  I  think 
you're  a  book  agent."  "  Not  guilty  ",  he  rejoined,  "  But  here  is 
my  room  ;  come  in." 

I  followed  him  into  a  commonplace  looking  apartment.  There 
was  nothing  devilish  about  it  at  all.  He  had  a  cheerful  fire,  an 
electric  reading  light  over  a  large  table,  and  a  few  plain  book 
cases.  A  long  tailed  bird,  a  parrot  or  macaw,  I  think,  stood  on 
a  perch  eating  a  piece  of  apple.  To  make  sure  that  I  was  quite 
awake  I  looked  at  some  of  the  papers  on  the  table — there  was 
a  Munsey's  Magazine  with  an  article  by  Brander  Matthews  on 
the  French  Academy,  and  a  New  York  Herald  with  a  carica- 
ture of  Speaker  Cannon.  I  had  recognized  the  green  cover  of 
Stephen  Phillips' "  Faust "  when  the  owner  of  the  room  gave  me 
a  chair  and  pulled  a  small  revolving  bookcase  between  us. 


16  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

1 1  keep  some  of  my  best  ones  here  ",  he  said ;  "  Here  is  a 
good  one  n.  And  he  handed  me  a  small  volume  in  a  modern 
Russia  binding.  I  opened  it  and  looked  at  the  title-page.  "  The 
True  Precepts  of  the  Dramatick  Art "  by  William  Shakespeare, 
Gent.    The  imprint  was  of  London,  1615. 

"What  do  you  think  of  that?  n  he  asked.  "  It's  a  very  clever 
hoax",  I  said,  "Who  got  it  up?"  He  smiled  again,  and  went 
over  to  poke  the  fire.  "  Do  you  think  it  a  hoax  ?  "  said  he. 
Evidently  the  man  was  a  little  simple-minded.  "  Of  course  it  is 
a  fake  n,  I  told  him.  "  Don't  you  know  there  is  no  such  work 
as  this  in  existence  ?  Don't  you  know  there  is  no  trace  or  men- 
tion of  anything  of  the  kind  ?  Don't  you  know  that  if  this  were 
a  genuine  work  every  book  collector  and  literary  critic  and 
librarian  and  Shakspearean  scholar  in  the  world  would  come 
tearing  in  here  and  drag  it  out  of  your  hands,  and  that  you  could 
get  heaven  only  knows  how  many  thousands  or  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  dollars  for  it?" 

He  stood  with  his  back  to  the  fire  and  laughed.  "  1  wouldn't 
get  so  excited  ",  said  he.  "  You  haven't  really  looked  at  the  book 
yet.  Rather  a  bother  to  get  up  a  hoax  like  that,  don't  you 
think  ?  Not  modern  printing,  nor  paper,  is  it  ?  Look  at  the 
opening  page  of  the  text,  you  will  see  there  that  it  is  an  auto- 
graph presentation  copy  to  Ben  Jonson." 

Sure  enough  there  was  some  writing,  illegible  to  me ;  and,  at 
the  end,  the  signature,  much  as  it  looks  on  the  will,  of  "William 
Shakspeare  ".  I  put  the  book  down.  "  1  hope  you  don't  think 
that  makes  me  believe  in  your  preposterous  book",  I  said.  There 
was  something  contemptuous  in  his  manner,  that  made  one  forget 
even  the  politeness  usually  accorded  a  man  who  has  been 
deceived  by  a  literary  forgery.  Nevertheless  he  was  so  assured 
that  it  would  have  made  me  uneasy  even  if  I  had  not  had  vague 
doubts  about  the  book  itself. 

Forgery  or  not,  it  was  an   extraordinary  thing,  there  could 


098  17 

be  no  question  of  that.  The  date,  at  least,  had  every  appearance 
of  being  genuine,  and  if  it  were,  I  asked  myself,  why  should 
not  the  rest  be  authentic  ?  "It  was  published  the  year  before 
his  death,  you  notice  ",  put  in  the  owner  of  the  book,  who  seemed 
to  have  followed  my  train  of  thought.  Precisely  ;  it  was  written 
during  those  last  three  years  at  Stratford.  It  had  always  appeared 
rather  strange  that  he  had  written  nothing  at  all  at  that  time. 

I  reached  out  to  take  up  the  book  again,  but  he  removed  it 
and  said,  n  Here  is  something  that  will  interest  you  more,  perhaps. 
It  is  the  prompt-book  of  Hamlet.  It  has  the  author's  annotations 
and  directions  for  the  stage  business.  There  are  none  given  for 
the  part  of  the  Ghost— which  was  the  part  he  played  ". 

He  said  all  of  this  in  a  matter  of  fact  way  that  made  it  seem 
real  enough.  I  turned  over  the  pages  of  the  thin  little  volume  — 
torn,  soiled,  a  little  worm-holed  in  places.  The  margins  of  the 
leaves  were  filled  with  annotations,  and  I  hunted  for  the  third 
act  when  the  king  and  Polonius  are  behind  the  curtain  to  see 
what  the  stage  directions  might  be.  In  hunting  I  found  a  letter 
inserted  between  two  leaves.  The  strange  individual  who  owned 
these  things  spoke.  "  That  is  a  letter  to  Burbage ",  he  said, 
1  from  Shakspeare.  It  seems  to  be  an  answer  to  an  inquiry  about 
the  insanity  of  Hamlet.  But  of  course  you  do  not  care  for 
forgeries ! n 

I  began  to  feel  apologetic.  "  I  enjoy  these  very  much  \  I  told 
him.  "  But  I  must  say  they  remind  me  of  a  passage  I  read 
somewhere  the  other  day.  It  was  about  a  Frenchman — one 
Monsieur  Chasles.  He  was  the  first  geometrician  of  France — 
what  could  you  expect  of  a  geometrician,  anyhow  ?  He  let  some 
one  sell  him  a  lot  of  autograph  letters.  There  were  three  from 
Cleopatra  to  Cato,  one  from  Lazarus  after  his  resurrection,  and 
one  from  Judas  Iscariot  to  Mary  Magdalene — all  on  paper  and 
in  the  best  of  French  ! 

As  for  your  books  they  recall  that  one  employed  in  '  The 


18  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

Temptation  of  Friar  Gonsol'.  Do  you  remember?  It  was  '  an 
uncut  unique  of  incalculable  value ;  the  height  of  it  was  half  a 
cubit,  and  the  breadth  of  it  the  fourth  part  of  a  cubit  and  the 
thickness  of  it  five  barleycorns  lacking  the  space  of  three  horse 
hairs.  This  book  contained  within  it  diverse  picturings,  symbols 
and  similarities  wrought  with  incomparable  craft,  the  same  being 
such  as  in  human  vanity  are  called  proof  before  letters  and 
imprinted  upon  India  paper ;  also  the  book  contained  written 
upon  its  pages  diverse  names  of  them  that  had  possessed  it,  all 
these  having  in  their  time  been  mighty  and  illustrious  personages  ; 
but  what  seemed  most  delectable  unto  the  friar  was  an  autographic 
writing  wherein  'twas  shown  that  the  book  sometime  had  been 
given  by  Venus  di  Medici  to  Apollos  at  Rhodes. '  " 

The  small  man  looked  a  little  bored  during  my  recital  of  this 
paragraph.  He  made  no  comment  on  it,  but  remarked  when  I 
ended,  "  I  have  only  one  other  Shakspeare  item  to  show  you". 
"  I  suppose  it  is  a  lost  play,  "  I  suggested.  "  Yes,  "  he  snapped, 
"  it  is, '  The  Raign  of  King  Alfred  the  Great1  ,  but  you  need  not 
look  at  it.  Do  books  with  a  history  interest  you  ?  Here  is  a  copy 
of  Marlowe's  '  Edward  II ',  stained  with  his  blood.  He  had  it 
in  his  pocket  when  he  was  stabbed.  And  next  to  it  is  a  small 
collection  of  the  '  Federalist '  papers.  Alexander  Hamilton  had 
this  in  the  boat  with  him  when  he  crossed  the  river  to  the 
duelling  ground.  "  I  suppose  I  looked  a  little  incredulous  at  this, 
for  he  added,  "  It  hasn't  any  blood  stains  on  it,  if  that's  what  you 
are  looking  for. "  "  Are  you  not  going  to  show  me  General 
Wolfe's  copy  of  Gray's  Elegy  ?  "  I  asked.  "  No,  I  am  not  "  he  said 
11  but  here  is  something  more  interesting.  "  He  drew  a  little  book  in 
green  calf  from  the  stand.  "  This  is  a  book  to  appeal  to  a  librarian 
for  it  is  the  catalogue  of  the  library  of  Count  Walstein  compiled 
by  his  librarian  Casanova.  "  I  gazed  at  the  title  page  :  "  Catalogue 
des  Livres  dans  la  Bibilotheque  de  Son  Excellence  le  Comte 
Walstein,  par  Giovanni  Jacopo  Casanova  de  Seingalt.  "    It  was 


098  19 

printed  in  Vienna  in  I  798.  Casanova  took  his  time  to  get  the 
catalogue  out,  for  he  had  been  eight  years  in  the  counts  employ 
when  this  was  published,  and  the  list  of  books  was  not  long. 
However,  he  really  was  engaged  more  as  an  "  entertainer  "  than 
as  a  librarian,  and  one  did  not  have  typewriters  nor  printed  cata- 
logue cards  in  those  days. 

Of  all  the  personages  who  have  been  librarians  at  one  time  or 
another  during  their  lives  there  is  no  one  who  seems  so  incon- 
gruous as  Casanova.  What  the  devil  was  he — the  notorious 
adventurer  and  rake — dcing  in  that  highly  respectable  galley? 
But  I  looked  with  unusual  delight  on  the  pages  of  the  tiny 
catalogue.  I  noticed  that  Casanova's  ideas  of  cataloguing  were 
of  the  most  primitive  variety,  and  I  suspected  that  the  whole  thing 
was  a  piece  of  jobbery  in  which  the  printer  and  the  librarian  con- 
spired to  despoil  "  His  Excellency  the  Count  Walstein  ". 

It  was  in  the  front  cover  of  this  book,  by  the  way,  that  I  first 
observed  the  book  plate  of  the  owner  of  these  curious  volumes. 
It  was  a  neat  red  leather  affair,  stamped  in  gold  with  a  head  of 
Dante,  and  the  usual  "  Ex  libris  "  at  the  top.  I  do  not  think  it 
was  undue  curiosity  for  me  to  look  below  the  portrait  for  the  name 
of  the  owner,  but  I  might  have  saved  myself  the  trouble.  It  was 
in  Italian — a  phrase  of  three  or  four  words,  not  looking  like  a 
name  at  all.  Unfortunately  1  do  not  read  Italian,  and  try  as  I  might, 
the  next  morning,  I  could  not  recall  the  words  to  look  them  up 
in  Baretti. 

My  host  must  have  known,  somehow,  that  I  was  looking  at 
the  book  plate.  ( I  do  not  see  how  he  knew  it,  for  he  had  his 
back  turned  at  the  time,  and  was  poking  the  fire  again.  He 
seemed  very  fond  of  this  pastime.)  "Oh  yes",  he  exclaimed, 
"  that  is  my  book  plate.  I  am  a  great  admirer  of  Dante.  He 
was  a  clever  fellow,  though  he  didn't  know  everything ".  I 
thought  his  condescension  toward  Dante  was  rather  quaint,  but 
I  didn't  say  so.    An  idea  occurred  to  me  and  remembering  the 


20  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

volume  of  Stephen   Phillips  I  had  seen  on  the  table,  I  asked 
him  if  he  were  also  an  admirer  of  Goethe  and  Milton. 

"  Why  do  you  put  them  together  ?  "  he  asked  gravely  ;  "  No, 
I  do  not  read  Goethe.  As  for  Milton,  he  is  well  enough.  Did  you 
know  he  wrote  a  five  act  tragedy  once  ?  "  I  assured  him  that  I 
was  not  aware  of  it.  "  Here  it  is,"  said  he.  I  did  not  believe 
him,  but  again  it  was,  if  not  genuine,  a  very  laborious  hoax,  indeed. 
The  play  dealt  with  the  life  and  death  of  Cicero,  and  it  was 
embellished  with  what  my  host  declared  to  be  a  genuine  letter 
from  one  of  Milton's  daughters  to  the  printer.  It  was  a  pathetic 
little  note  and  it  said  among  other  things  :  "  Our  father  is  more 
testy  and  in  very  truth  groweth  more  choleric  day  by  day. " 
Everyone  has  pitied  the  three  girls  who  had  to  stay  indoors  and 
listen  to  the  dictation  of  "  Paradise  Lost  "  (  and  what  was  worse 
to  "  Paradise  Regained " )  when  they  wanted  to  go  out  to 
parties  and  balls —  or  whatever  Puritan  girls  went  to  in  those 
days.   Here  was  a  witness  to  their  anguish. 

"  Speaking  of  Cicero, "  said  the  man,  "  here  is  his  treatise  on 
the  authorship  of  the  Homeric  poems.  Translated  by  John 
Dryden,  you  will  notice.  Never  heard  of  it  ?  Well,  it  is  very 
dry  reading  I  assure  you.  But  he  proves  beyond  a  doubt  that  the 
Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  were  written  by  a  Greek  of  the  sixth 
century  named  Calisthenes. "  I  could  not  stand  this.  "  What 
do  you  mean  by  the  sixth  century  ?  "  I  asked.  "  Why,  the  sixth 
century,"  he  stopped  and  stammered  a  little.  "  The  sixth  cen- 
tury before  the  present  era,  "  he  said  at  last.  "  But  that  is  utterly 
absurd,"  I  returned. 

He  interrupted  me :  "  Not  half  so  absurd  as  this.  Look,  here 
is  a  denial  of  the  cherry  tree  story  written  by  George  Washington. 
It  is  awfully  solemn.  You  would  enjoy  reading  it.  "  I  refrained 
from  any  comment  on  this  fabulous  creation.  But  I  noticed  in 
the  pamphlet,  as  I  had  noticed  stamped  on  the  book-plates  of 
most  of  the  volumes,  three  figures — a  zero,  followed  by  a  nine 


098  21 

and  an  eight.  The  sign  read  098,  and  it  was  repeated  on 
nearly  all  of  his  books. 

I  was  about  to  ask  him  its  meaning  when  he  inquired,  "  Do 
you  care  for  manuscripts  and  autographs  ?  Here  is  Lee's  '  lost 
dispatch ' — found  two  days  before  Antietam  and  sent  to 
McClellan.  It  was  wrapped  around  three  cigars — the  man  who 
found  it  smoked  two  of  them,  but  I  got  the  other,  and  here  it 
is.  It  is  as  dry  as  Cicero  on  Homer." 

Here  is  a  strategical  study  of  Waterloo  written  by  Napoleon 
at  St.  Helena, — '  La  Bataille  de  Mont  Saint  Jean  '.  And  here 
is  a  copy  of  Corneille  presented  by  Napoleon  to  some  English 
girl  at  St.  Helena.  Look  at  the  inscription, — he  was  trying  to  learn 
English  in  those  days :  '  to  Miss  Betty  with  Friendship '.  Only 
the  initial  N  as  a  signature." 

This  would  be  rather  entertaining  if  you  read  Russian.  It  is 
the  sealed  orders  given  by  the  czar  to  the  commander  of  the 
Russian  squadron  that  came  to  New  York  during  the  Civil  War 
It  contains  instructions  as  to  the  course  of  the  Russian  fleet  if 
England  interfered  on  behalf  of  the  South. 

n  Here  is  the  rest  of  the  diary  of  John  Wilkes  Booth.  Stanton 
suppressed  it  all  until  1867.  Some  of  it  was  published  then — 
this  part  never  has  been  published.  There  is  an  account  of  the 
attempt  to  abduct  Lincoln,  as  well  as  of  the  '  poison  plot '. 
That  would  have  succeeded  if  Lincoln  had  not  by  chance 
changed  his  druggist.  To  go  back  to  the  books.  Here  are  two 
copies  of  Johnson's  Dictionary.  One  of  them  is  the  identical 
copy  that  Becky  Sharp  flung  out  of  the  carriage  when  she  left 
school.  The  other  stood  on  Nelson's  writing  desk  in  his  cabin  on 
the  Victory.  " 

I  took  the  latter  from  him  and  looked  at  it  with  some  feeling.  I 
did  not  like  to  know  that  he  had  it.  Of  all  scenes  in  history 
there  is  none  more  pathetic  than  that  of  the  little  one  armed 
man  in  his  cabin  before  the  fight,  writing  his  last  letters,  worrying 


22  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

his  soul  over  his  "  beloved  Emma  ",  and  putting  at  the  head  of 
his  letter  that  most  telling  phrase :  "  In  sight  of  the  combined 
fleets  of  France  and  Spain,  then  distant  about  ten  miles.  "  He 
had  always  an  ear  for  the  dramatic,  and  no  one  could  have 
composed  that  sentence  better. 

The  owner  of  the  book  remarked  meditatively :  "  He  took 
this  dictionary  down  from  its  shelf,  and  wrote  his  letters  resting 
them  upon  it.  He  held  the  book  upon  his  knee  ".  I  stared  at 
him.  "  How  do  you  know  that  ?  "  But  the  man  did  not  answer 
me.  He  took  out  his  watch.  "  It  is  nearly  twelve.  I  beg  your 
pardon  but  I  have  to  leave.  I  have  an  engagement  in  New 
York,  and  I  must  catch  the  12. 1  5.  You  will  excuse  me,  I  am 
sure". 

He  rather  hurried  me  toward  the  door.  It  was  five  minutes 
before  twelve.  I  tried  to  thank  him,  but  he  said  "  I  will  see  you 
again  in  a  few  days  "  and  I  was  left  alone  in  the  corridor. 

I  got  up  to  my  room  somehow — I  only  recall  three  flights  of 
stairs.  George,  the  elevator  boy,  had  gone  to  bed,  and  nearly  all 
the  lights  were  out.  Since  that  night  I  have  tried  to  find  the 
man's  apartment  twice,  but  there  is  absolutely  nothing  below  the 
basement. 

As  soon  as  I  could  I  consulted  a  Decimal  Classification  to 
find  what  098  might  stand  for.   It  says :  "  Imaginary  books  ". 

As  for  George,  when  I  ask  him  what  he  has  done  with  his 
red  uniform,  he  only  grins. 


THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  BOARD 


The  cataloguer  was  surprised  to  see  the  President  of  the  Board 
of  Trustees  enter  the  room.  Surprised,  and  a  little  terrified,  as  he 
always  felt  in  the  presence  of  this  important  old  gentleman,  who 
resembled  Gladstone  and  did  his  best  to  play  the  part. 

The  President  began  in  his  customary  oratorical  manner :  "  I 
would  be  pleased,  young  man,  if  you  would  come  out  with  me, 
to  this  catalogue  of  yours,  and  explain  the  entire  system.  I  wish 
to  be  sure  that  I  understand  it  perfectly.  I  may  have  occasion  to 
consult  it,  or  I  may  desire  to  explain  it  to  some  visitor.  At  present, 
I  am  not  sure  that  I  entirely  comprehend  its  use.  If  I  may  disturb 
you—". 

The  cataloguer  was  already  on  his  feet,  relieved  that  there  was 
nothing  worse  in  view,  and  as  they  started  toward  the  other  room 
he  began  with  the  usual  and  hackneyed  formula,  "  You  see,  it  is 
a   simple   dictionary  catalogue,    arranged   alphabetically.    The 

books  are  entered  under  their  authors,  subjects  and  titles.   The 

. n 

"  Ah,  yes, n  the  President  interrupted  majestically,  "  I  believe 
I  am  aware  of  that.  What  I  wish  to  ascertain  is  its  method  of  use. 
Now,  here  we  are.  Let  us  suppose  that  I  desire  to  know  what 
books  the  library  contains  on  the  subject  of  the  Civil  war.  I  am 
at  present  engaged — in  so  far  as  I  can  find  the  time,  among 
other  pressing  duties,  in  the  compilation  of  a  history  of  my  regi- 
ment, and  especially  its  part  in  the  Battle  of  South  Mountain. 
Now  let  me  see.  Here  is  the  drawer  with  its  little  label :  Ci — Cz. 
That  ought  to  be  the  one. ' 


24  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

He  pulled  out  the  drawer  and  began  to  move  the  cards  with 
deliberation.  The  cataloguer  knew  very  well  what  was  coming, 
and  he  waited  uneasily.  The  President  was  a  man  whom  it 
did  not  do  to  hurry  or  advise.  Presently  the  card  appeared.  It 
said  simply,  "  Civil  War,  U.  S.,  see  U.  S.  History — Civil  War." 
The  cataloguer  felt  that  this  was  sound  cataloguian  and  he  was 
prepared  to  defend  it,  if  need  be  ;  still  he  did  wish  that  the  Presi- 
dent had  not  drawn  a  blank  at  the  very  outset.  The  President's 
eyebrows  — they  were  large  and  bushy  ones,  wrinkled  a  little. 

n  See  U.  S.  History,  Civil  War,  "  he  read  in  his  most  Edward 
Everett  manner.  "Well,  I  suppose  we  shall  have  to.  Where  is 
that  ?  Oh,  down  there  at  the  other  end  of  the  room  ?  Rather 
a  long  walk,  young  man  !  " 

And  the  two  set  out  for  the  other  end  of  the  catalogue.  "  Now 
we  have  it.  Here  it  is.  U.  S.  History,  ah,  um,  yes.  Revolution, 
where  is  the  card  ?  What's  this,  War  of  1812?  No  ;  ah,  here 
we  have  it !  Now,  I  must  put  on  my  glasses. " 

But  the  cataloguer  had  already  read  the  card — for  in  place 
of  the  dozens  he  expected  to  see,  there  was  only  one,  and  it 
bore  the  neatly  type-written  inscription,  "  U.  S.  History,  Civil 
War.  Nothing  doing.  "  By  this  time  the  older  man  had  adjusted, 
his  eyeglasses.  "  What  is  this  ?  "  he  inquired,  "  What  does  that 
signify  ?  "  "  I'm  sure  I  don't  know, "  said  the  cataloguer,  "  there 
should  be  a  lot  of  cards  there.  I  don't  understand  it. " 

"Well,  1  am  very  certain  I  do  not,"  returned  the  President. 
"  I  shall  be  very  much  surprised  to  learn  that  the  librarian  has  not 
procured  any  books  at  all  on  the  subject.  However,  my  object 
now  is  to  ascertain  the  use  of  this  catalogue.  Let  us  try  again. 
The  recent  great  struggle  in  the  Far  East  is  a  topic  which  Mr. 
Mudge  cannot  have  neglected.  I  have  learned  my  lesson  this 
time.  We  will  look  under  "  Japan.  History.  " 

The  cataloguer  hastily  began  :  "  1  think,  sir,  you  had  better 
look —  "    "  No,   no,  young  man,  not  a   word, "   the   President 


THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  BOARD  25 


interposed.  n  You  are  supposed  not  to  be  here.  I  am  one  of  your 
patrons — a  workman,  let  us  say,  using  the  catalogue  tor  the  first 
time. "  To  the  uncomfortable  cataloguer  it  seemed  that  he  was 
an  emissary  of  the  Devil,  but  he  didn't  say  so.  The  President 
advanced  to  the  drawer  marked  "  Japan  "  and  began  again.  He 
was  rewarded  with  this  information.  "  Japan,  History,  War  with 
Russia,  see  Russo-Japanese  War,  1904-1905." 

The  president  had  the  air  of  a  man  whose  worst  suspicions 
were  being  confirmed,  but  whose  patience  and  magnanimity 
were  boundless.  He  tramped  back  to  the  letter  R  of  the 
catalogue,  and  after  a  long  and  distressing  interval  he  found  the 
card  he  sought.  The  wretched  cataloguer  felt  the  ends  of  his 
fingers  grow  cold,  and  his  forehead  get  hot  as  he  read  the  one 
word,  "  5/ung  ! " 

An  alarming  purple  hue  seemed  to  spread  over  the  President's 
face.  The  cataloguer  really  thought  he  was  going  off  in  an 
apoplectic  fit.  "  I  do  not  understand  this,  "  he  burst  out,  "  I  never 
put  any  such  cards  here.  Somebody  has  been  playing  tricks. " 

The  President  began  to  boom  like  a  Chinese  gong.  "  Young 
man, "  he  said,  "  I  do  not  pretend  to  be  conversant  with  all  the 
latest  slang  in  use  among  street  arabs.  You  are  apparently 
an  expert  in  that  line.  I  have  always  thought  you  to  be  too  young 
and  too  frivolous  for  your  present  position.  I  have  always  doubted 
the  value  of  this  new-fangled  catalogue.  My  doubts  are  justified  ! 
I  shall  summon  the  librarian  and  direct  him  to  return  to  the  use 
of  the  book  catalogue  employed  when  Mr.  Kirkwood  was 
librarian. "  He  touched  an  electric  button  and  a  bell  began  to 
ring,  noisily.  It  made  such  a  racket  that  the  cataloguer  turned 
to  see  where  the  sound  came  from.  He  looked  into  the  face  of 
his  alarm  clock,  and  thence  about  the  familiar  walls  of  his  bed- 
room. He  gave  a  sigh  of  relief  to  see  that  the  indignant  President 
had  vanished  and  that  there  was  nothing  worse  before  him  than 
the  necessity  of  getting  up. 


THE  CHILDREN'S  LIBRARIAN   VERSUS 

HUCKLEBERRY  FINN :  A  BRIEF 

FOR  THE  DEFENCE* 

One  by  one  the  children's  departments  of  the  public  libraries 
are  putting  up  the  little  dimity  curtains  of  Extreme  Respectability, 
while  from  behind  them  appears  the  Children's  Librarian  shaking 
a  disapproving  head  at  two  old  friends  who  stand  outside. 
"  No,  no, "  she  says, "  Tom  Sawyer,  and  you,  you  horrid  Huckle- 
berry Finn,  you  musn't  come  here.  All  the  boys  and  girls  in  here 
are  good  and  pious ;  they  have  clean  faces,  they  go  to  Sunday- 
school,  and  they  love  it,  too.  They  say  '  Yes,  papa  ' ,  and  '  Yes, 
mamma  ' ,  and  they  call  their  teacher  '  Dearest  teacher  '.  They 
never  do  anything  bad  or  disrespectful.  But  you — you  naughty, 
bad  boys,  your  faces  aren't  washed,  and  your  clothes  are  all 
covered  with  dirt.  I  do  not  believe  either  of  you  brushed  his 
hair  this  morning,  and  Tom  Sawyer,  I  saw  you  yawn  in  church 
last  Sunday.  As  for  you,  Huckleberry,  you  haven't  any  shoes  or 
stockings  at  all,  and  everyone  knows  what  your  father  is.  Do 
you  suppose  I  would  let  you  in  here  with  Rollo  and  Jonas,  and 
all  these  other  precious  little  dears  ?  Now,  both  of  you  run  right 
away  as  fast  as  you  can,  or  I  will  call  the  policeman  and  have 
him  attend  to  you  ! " 

Together  with  a  great  many  other  men  and  boys  I  have  wit- 
nessed this  moral  scene  a  number  of  times,  with  a  rising  sense 
of  sorrow  and  indignation.  Not  that  I  would  breathe  a  word 
against  the  Children's  Librarian.  She  has  my  deepest  respect  and 
admiration.    She  has  been  to  a  school  where  they  study  to  be 

*  From  "The  Library  Journal,  "  July,  1907. 


CHILDREN'S  LIBRARIAN  VERSUS  HUCKLEBERRY  FINN  27 


children's  librarians — I  never  have.  She  has  spent  four  or  five 
years  in  children's  rooms.  I  have  only  observed  them  (  although 
with  interest)  from  another  part  of  the  library.  But  one  advan- 
tage she  has  not  had.  She  has  never  been  a  boy.  And  I  claim 
that  possession  of  that  qualification  renders  me  able  to  judge 
fairly  in  the  case  of  the  Children's  Librarian  Versus  Tom  Saw- 
yer and  Huckleberry  Finn. 

At  first  I  have  thought  that  the  case  need  not  be  argued  nor 
judged.  1  have  felt  like  saying,  "  Tom  and  Huck,  you  wouldn't 
like  it  if  you  went  in  there.  Their  boys  and  girls  are  a  set  of  little 
goody-goodies.  There  isn't  one  of  them  that  would  have  rescued 
Becky  from  the  cave  as  you  did,  Tom ;  nor  one  that  would 
have  risked  his  body  and  soul  for  Jim,  as  Huckleberry  did. 
There  is  only  one  real  boy  in  there  —  Tom  Bailey  of  Rivermouth, 
and  they  will  find  out  about  him  soon,  and  how  he  scared  his 
townsfolk  with  a  battery  of  guns,  and  then  they'll  put  him  out, 
for  fear  other  boys  will  catch  that  habit.  I  know  you,  Tom  and 
Huck,  and  so  do  lots  of  others,  and  I'd  rather  spend  an  hour 
on  your  raft  than  listen  to  that  Jonas  any  day.  There  are  some 
fellows  we  can  get  to  come  along  with  us.  Tom  Bailey,  of  course, 
and  his  Centipede  Club,  and  a  boy  named  Davy  who  has  a 
Goblin  with  him — we'll  get  them.  Then  there's  a  boy  from  India 
called  Kim,  and  two  more  from  the  same  country  —  British 
drummer  boys  named  Jakin  and  Lew — that  lady  wouldn't  like 
them,  either,  because  they  swear  and  fight,  but  they  amount  to 
something,  anyhow.  If  we  want  to  talk  with  any  girls,  there's 
that  Alice  —  she's  English  and  rather  prim,  but  she  has  some 
awfully  funny  friends.  She'll  do  on  rainy  days  when  the  raft  is 
up  at  the  bank.  Now,  come  on,  and  leave  the  lady  and  her 
little  darlings  to  themselves.  All  the  boys  and  plenty  of  men  will 
go  with  us,  and  the  mother's  pets  can  go  inside  and  play  with 
Little  Lord  Fauntleroy. n 

At  first,  as  I  have  said,  this  has  seemed  the  only  thing  for  a 


28  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 


friend  of  Huckleberry  and  Tom  to  say.  But  the  more  one  con- 
siders, the  more  one  becomes  convinced  that  Tom  and  Huck 
are  urgently  needed  inside.  There  has  been  a  great  increase  in 
boys'  books  during  the  last  twenty  years,  but  the  condition  of 
the  class  as  a  whole  remains  about  the  same.  It  is  generally 
agreed  that  the  English  Tom — Tom  Brown — is  nearly  incom- 
prehensible to  American  boys.  Harvey  Cheyne  of  "  Captains 
Courageous  "  is  an  extreme  and  detestable  type  to  begin  with, 
and  his  reformation  is  a  trifle  obvious  and  n  preachy  " .  None  need 
inveigh  against  "  Stalky  and  Co. " — it  never  became  popular 
with  boys.  As  for  the  "  Jungle  Books  " ,  if  they  are,  as  some 
believe,  the  best  of  Mr.  Kipling's  work,  they  are  entirely  the 
most  conscious,  and  appeal,  I  believe,  more  to  grownups  than 
to  boys.  Of  Henty's  international  gallery  of  wax-works,  it  must 
be  admitted  that  they  are  in  demand,  but  the  faint  praise 
accorded  them  in  the  n  A.  L.  A.  Catalogue  n  seems  a  just  esti- 
mate of  their  worth.  Mr.  Barbour's  athletic  stories  are  well  liked, 
but  they  appear  machine-made.  Fairy  tales  are  out  of  the  pro- 
vince of  my  discussion,  as  are  juvenile  historical,  biographical,  or 
n  scientific n  works.  In  the  class  of  fiction  for  boys  there  seems 
to  be  little  left,  except  Alger,  Castlemon,  Optic  and  Co.,  and 
many  of  their  works  are  barred  out  by  the  same  authorities  who 
exclude  Tom  and  Huckleberry. 

Now,  just  as  certain  novels  for  adults  stand  head  and  shoulders 
above  the  rest  because  their  authors  dared  depict  men  and  women 
as  they  are,  these  two  books  of  Mark  Twain,  almost  alone  among 
boys'  books,  deserve  the  appellation  "  great " ;  because  they 
present  real  boys.  Not  Henty's  wooden  heroes,  nor  golden- 
curled,  lace-collared  Fauntleroys  ;  but  real  boys,  with  all  of  boys' 
absurd  superstitions,  hunger  for  romance  and  adventure,  and 
disregard  for  smug  respectability.  Their  adventures  are  such  as  to 
compel  attention  and  interest.  Professor  Brander  Matthews  well 
says  that  since  Crusoe  discovered  the  foot-print  there  has  been 


CH/LDREN'S  LIBRARIAN  VERSUS  HUCKLEBERRY  FINN  29 


scarcely  an  incident  in  literature  to  match  the  moment  when 
Tom  Sawyer,  lost  in  the  cave,  sees  the  hand  of  his  enemy, 
Injun  Joe.  William  Morris  used  to  read  n  Huckleberry  Finn  " 
and  declare  it  America's  chief  contribution  to  art.  Professor 
Barrett  Wendell  in  his  "  Literary  History  of  America,  n  makes  a 
similar  claim,  while  Stevenson's  praise  of  the  book  is  known  to 
anyone  who  has  read  his  letters.*  But  what  do  these  scholars  and 
literary  men  amount  to  beside  the  thousands  of  men  and  boys 
who  have  met  with  no  better  fellows  in  all  the  land  of  story- 
books than  Tom  and  Huck,  and  who  now  see  their  old  friends 
turned  out  of  some  library  every  year,  and  sent  to  herd  with  such 
cheap  and  vapid  creatures  as  Bowery  Billy,  the  Boy  Detective  ! 

"  But, "  says  the  Children's  Librarian,  n  I  know  the  books 
are  interesting  and  all  that,  but  it  only  makes  them  the  more 
pernicious.  They  glorify  mischief.  When  Huckleberry  Finn 
appears  on  the  scene,  what  does  he  have  with  him  ?  A  dead 
cat!  Is  that  the  sort  of  thing  we  want  to  teach  our  boys  to  do? 
Why,  somewhere  or  other,  a  library  had  these  books,  and  the 
boys  formed  a  Tom  Sawyer  Club,  and  they  broke  some  windows 
and  did  something  else,  I  don't  know  what.  The  books  are 
irreverent  toward  sacred  things  and  Sunday-schools,  and  oh, 
they  are  utterly  bad,  and  I  won't  have  them  in  the  children's 
room ! " 

Against  this  it  can  only  be  urged  that  literature  is  nothing  but 
a  record  of  people  doing  the  things  they  should  not  do ;  that 
condemnation  of  it  for  this  reason  alone  is  usually  regarded 
among  enlightened  persons  as  bigotry ;  and  that  boys  will  have 
to  be  reared  in  cloisters  if  they  are  never  to  commit  mischief.    n  Of 

As  I  revise  this  there  appears  in  the  North  American  Review  an  article 
on  Mark  Twain  by  Professor  Phelps,  of  Yale.  Professor  Phelps  thinks  that 
"  Huckleberry  Finn  "  can  be  fully  appreciated  only  by  adults  — children  devour 
it,  but  do  not  digest  it,  he  says.  This  is  true  only  of  the  great  books—  "  Alice 
in  Wonderland,  "  "  Gulliver's  Travels,  "  and  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,  "  for  exam- 
ple.    Of  course  the  last  two  were  not  written  for  children  at  all. 

E.  L.  P. 


30  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

course  they  will  be  mischievous, "  she  replies,  "  but  we  musn't 
furnish  them  with  the  impulse. "  Are  you  sure  that  these  books 
do  furnish  the  impulse,  madam  ?  Do  not  the  stories  about  the 
boys  made  bad  by  them  sound  a  bit  thin  ?  Now  and  then  the 
newspapers  tell  of  some  young  man  who  winds  up  a  career  of 
dissipation  by  murdering  his  whole  family.  As  he  stands  upon 
the  gallows  he  attributes  his  downfall  to  the  day  when  someone 
tempted  him  to  smoke  a  cigarette  or  drink  a  glass  of  beer. 
His  own  evil  soul  he  absolves  from  blame,  and  puts  it  all  upon 
that  universal  scapegoat,  the  cigarette.  The  sin  he  did,  he  would 
have  done  without  the  aid  of  cigarettes,  and  the  mischief  that 
boys  commit,  would  be  committed  if  "  Tom  Sawyer "  and 
1  Huckleberry  Finn "  had  never  been  written. 

I  am  appealing,  with  little  hope,  to  a  court  whose  decision  is 
already  rendered.  The  word  has  gone  forth  that  these  two 
books  are  to  be  condemned.  Yet  almost  any  hundred  which  the 
children's  departments  contain  could  be  better  spared.  For  a 
large  class  of  boys  there  are  fathers  and  uncles  and  big  brothers 
who  will  see  to  it  that  they  do  not  miss  that  trip  down  the 
Mississippi ;  that  they  too  watch  with  beating  hearts  while  Injun 
Joe  and  his  pal  unearth  the  buried  treasure  in  the  haunted  house  ; 
that  they  know  that  glorious  pair,  the  King  and  the  Duke ;  and 
that  they  see  the  Shepherdsons  and  the  Grangerfords  and  their 
feud.  These  grown  men  would  as  soon  dry  up  the  swimming 
pools  in  summer,  or  scatter  ashes  on  the  coasting  hills  in  winter 
as  to  deny  their  boys  what  they  themselves  so  loved  twenty  or 
thirty  years  ago. 

But  there  is  another  class  of  boys  whose  relatives  cannot  pro- 
vide any  books.  The  public  library  is  supposed  to  minister  to 
these  as  well  as  to  the  others.  Whether  these  know  Tom  and 
Huckleberry  often  rests  with  a  lady  who  is  horrified  by  a  dead 
cat,  and  shocked  at  Tom's  lack  of  scriptural  knowledge.  If  these 
ladies  could  be  prevailed  to  leave  the  case  to  their  fathers  or, 


CHILDREN'S  LIBRARIAN  VERSUS  HUCKLEBERRY  FINN  31 


uncles  or  brothers  there  might  be  a  chance  for  the  poorer  boys 
as  well. 

The  words  of  my  friend  Frank  Marshall  bear  on  this  subject. 
He  was  a  director  of  his  town  library  when  they  elected  Miss 
Timmins  to  succeed  old  Mr.  Wheaton,  who  had  presided  over 
the  library  for  thirty  years.  Marshall's  term  of  office,  as  director, 
expired  soon  after,  but  he  told  me  that  Miss  Timmins  promised 
well.  "  She  is  clearing  things  up,  "  he  wrote  me,  "  and  I  am  glad 
you  advised  me  to  send  for  her.  It  seems  that  she  wants  to  open 
a  room  for  kids,  and  they  have  told  her  to  go  ahead.  The  Junior 
and  Bob  are  tickled,  for  old  Wheaton  used  to  drive  them  out 
sometimes,  and  he  never  was  very  pleasant  to  me  when  I  went 
down  to  get  books  for  them. " 

I  went  over  to  see  Marshall  last  week,  and  I  gathered  that 
Miss  Timmins  had  carried  her  clearing-up  process  too  far  to  suit 
him.  "  We  thought  we  were  getting  a  dove, "  he  said,  "  but  we 
were  fooled.  It  turns  out  that  they  give  them  some  kind  of  sail- 
ing directions  at  that  school,  and  one  of  the  first  articles  is :  into 
the  fire  with  Mark  Twain.  Why,  there  was  a  dear  old  copy 
of  'Huckleberry  Finn' — I  believe  it  was  the  same  one  I  used 
to  read — and  that  young  woman  fell  on  it  like  a  monk  of  the 
Inquisition,  and  burned  it  up.  Bob  had  never  read  it,  and  when 
he  went  after  it  she  told  him  that  it  was  not  a  nice  book  at  all. 
He  told  her  I  had  advised  him  to  read  it,  but  that  didn't  make 
any  difference.  She  gave  him  a  thing  called  '  Little  Brothers  in 
Feathers  and  Fuzz, '  or  some  such  name,  and  told  him  to  read 
that.  He  hasn't  opened  it.  I'd  lick  him  if  he  did.  Simpkin,  over 
here  —  you  know  what  sort  he  is — chairman  of  the  library  board 
now ;  he  succeeded  me.  He  says  the  town  has  been  reading 
too  much  fiction,  and  that  Miss  Timmms  has  already  reduced 
the  percentage  of  it  by  several  points.  I  asked  him  whether  he 
thought  the  '  Little  Brothers '  were  a  good  substitute.  He  said 
they  had  ordered  a  good  many  books  on  nature.    I  tried  to  get 


32  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

out  of  him  what  was  the  net  gain  to  the  town,  if  boys  took 
home  books  they  never  read,  but  he  is  apparently  satisfied  if 
the  figures  make  us  out  as  suddenly  increased  in  intellect  by 
twenty  per  cent.  I  think  it  helps  Miss  Timmins  along  with  the 
other  librarians,  too.  You  ought  to  know  about  that — does  it  ?" 

Marshall's  sister  came  into  the  room  before  1  could  answer. 
She  is  president  of  the  Twenty  Minute  Culture  Club,  of  which, 
it  appears,  Miss  Timmins  is  secretary. 

Miss  Marshall  said,  "  Frank,  1  found  the  boys  reading  'Tom 
Sawyer'  and  '  Huckleberry  Finn'— they  said  you  got  the  books 
for  them." 

"  Quite  so ;  I  brought  them  out  from  town  this  afternoon. " 

1  Why,  Frank,  don't  you  know  Miss  Timmins  has  banished 
them  from  the  library  ?  They  are  just  as  vulgar  as  they  can  be. 
Miss  Timmins  says  that  no  children's  library  will  have  them  now. 
She  says  that  the  famous  library  at " 

"  Emily,  "  interrupted  her  brother,  "  Miss  Timmins  is  in  supreme 
command  in  the  curious  looking  room  she  has  fixed  up  there. 
But  she  isn't  here.  I  think  she  knows  how  to  make  the  neatest 
letters  with  a  pen  I  ever  saw,  and  she  is  very  sweet  and  kind 
with  all  those  small  children.  I  hear  she  tells  them  stories, 
which  is  certainly  a  change  from  old  Wheaton,  who  used  to  get 
after  them  with  a  cane.  But  she  doesn't  understand  boys.  How 
could  she  ?  My  opinion  on  their  books  is  better  than  hers. 
When  she  sets  herself  up  as  an  authority  on  that  subject,  she  is 
meddling,  just  as  much  as  1  should  be  if  I  tried  to  teach  little 
girls  to  dress  dolls.  As  for  you,  Emily,  I  am  very  fond  of  you,  but 
at  times  I  suspect  there  is  an  infusion  of  buttermilk  or  weak  tea  in 
your  blood.  Your  only  writer  is  Jane  Austen,  or  when  you 
feel  wild  and  desperate,  Clara  Louise  Burnham.  No  wonder  you 
are  shocked  at  men's  books.  I  remember  you  find  Kipling  too 
strong  for  your  taste.  Don't  worry  the  boys,  Emily.  I  didn't  go 
to  the  bad  on  Mark  Twain,  and  I  think  they'll  pull  through." 


THE  CATALOGUE  BEAUTIFUL 


"  A  Plea  for  the  Popularization  of  Card  Catalogues  "  is  the 
title  of  a  forthcoming  pamphlet  from  whose  proof  sheets  the 
following  extracts  are  made,  by  permission.  In  the  introduction 
the  author  dwells  upon  two  facts,  both  of  sufficient  importance 
to  attract  the  attention  of  librarians  everywhere.  The  first  is  that 
the  patrons  of  libraries  are  displaying  a  growing  repugnance  to 
to  the  use  of  the  card  catalogues.  As  these  cabinets  of  drawers 
increase  in  number  until  it  seems  as  if  the  old  joke  about  the 
catalogues  of  the  Boston  Public  Library  and  Harvard  University 
meeting  on  Harvard  Bridge  might  become  literally  true,  the 
mental  distress  and  physical  exhaustion  suffered  by  those  con- 
sulting one  of  them  becomes  too  important  to  be  disregarded. 

Almost  any  day  in  any  large  library  their  fearful  influence  may 
be  observed.  Dozens  of  harrowed  individuals  are  seen  trying 
to  think  whether  the  name  of  Thomas  De  Quincy  will  be  found 
in  the  drawer  marked  De  or  that  labelled  Qu.  Then  they  make 
the  choice — always  wrong — and  are  seen,  with  pain  only  too 
apparent  on  their  brows,  dashing  off  to  the  other  drawer. 

The  careworn  man  who  wishes  to  read  the  novels  of  Mr. 
Winston  Churchill  is  found  pawing  madly  about  the  cards 
headed  "  Win  ".  Rescued  from  this  by  a  hurrying  library  at- 
tendant, and  told  the  secret  of  the  inversion  of  names,  he  attacks 
the  letter  C.  Noticing  by  a  sign  that  titles  are  also  included  in 
the  catalogue  he  thinks  he  may  as  well  go  at  once  for  the  par- 
ticular story  of  his  choice,  and  proceeds  to  the  "  Carvel "  part  to 
find  Richard  of   that  clan.    Again  baffled,  he  has  recourse  to 


34  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 


another  librarian,  who  says  that  in  this  case  he  should  have 
sought  the  letter  R  and  looked  for  Richard. 

Already  the  madhouse  yawns  wide  for  the  poor  wretch,  and 
who  shall  say  what  charge  will  be  laid  at  the  cataloguer's  door 
in  the  Day  when  all  things  are  accounted  for  ? 

Nor,  according  to  the  author  of  the  pamphlet  in  question, 
are  the  consulters  of  the  catalogues  the  only  persons  whose 
reasons  are  in  danger.  The  cataloguers  themselves,  the  very 
ones  who  sit  all  day  spinning  this  codified  brainstorm,  are  in  peril. 
Not  long  ago  a  body  of  them  got  together  and  bound  themselves 
by  a  fearful  oath  not  to  part  until  they  had  settled  once  and  for- 
ever the  question  whether  it  is  better  to  write  "  Department  of 
Agriculture"  or  "  Agriculture,  Department  of.  They  well 
knew  that  many  a  strong  mind  has  come  to  ruin  on  this  reef, 
but  they  were  a  reckless  lot,  and  they  plunged  in.  Midnight 
came,  and  found  them  still  bickering.  The  struggle  continued 
during  the  early  hours  of  the  morning,  and  at  last  the  cold  gray 
light  of  dawn  looked  in  at  the  shutters,  but  whatever  it  saw,  no 
solution  of  the  problem  was  there,  and  the  mental  condition  of 
the  disputants  has  ever  since  been  one  upon  which  it  is  not 
pleasant  to  dwell. 

"  Consequently  ",  says  the  writer,  "  it  is  more  than  plain,  it  is 
imperative,  that  something  must  be  done.  Cataloguers  must  not 
be  allowed  to  dally  with  paranoia ;  nor  library  patrons  to  trem- 
ble on  the  brink  of  doddering  imbecility.  What  shall  it  be  ? 
The  human  mind  has  not  yet  devised  any  better  machine  for 
its  purpose  than  the  card  catalogue,  nor  is  it  likely  to  do  so. 
Books  pour  in  upon  us,  clamoring  each  for  its  card,  seven  and 
a  half  centimetres  high  and  twelve  and  a  half  long,  with  a  neat 
hole  punched  in  the  bottom. n 

"  My  solution  is  simple.  The  catalogue  must  be  popularized. 
No  longer  shall  the  task  of  finding  a  book  in  the  catalogue  be 
weariness  of  the  flesh  alone,  no  longer  shall  the  cataloguers  find 


THE  CATALOGUE  BEAUTIFUL  35 

their  only  joy  in  digging  out  the  middle  name  and  age  of  bash- 
ful authors.  Reports,  even  bulletins,  are  nowadays  made  inter- 
esting. Why  not  catalogues  ?  The  frigid  scheme  of  annotation 
did  not  do  it,  but  that  was  because  it  did  not  work  in  the  right 
direction. " 

"  My  plan  is  this :  Let  each  heading,  be  it  author's  name,  or 
subject  entry,  be  followed  by  a  card  or  cards  bearing  some 
brief  extract,  quotation,  or  original  composition,  throwing  light 
or  giving  information  on  the  subject  that  shall  be  inspiring  and 
instructive  and  whet  the  appetite  for  more.  To  illustrate,  let  us 
suppose  that  the  reader  is  looking  up  the  subject  of  camels. 
What  could  be  more  useful,  after  he  has  read  over  the  cards 
showing  the  library's  resources  on  the  topic,  than  to  find  the 
following  entry,  giving  as  it  does,  a  perfect  insight  to  the  mind 
and  character  of  the  animal : 

1  The  '  orse  '  e  knows  above  a  bit,  the  bullock's  but  a  fool, ' 
1  The  elephant's  a  gentleman,  the  battery  mule's  a  mule ;  ' 

'  But  the  commissariat  cam-u-el,  when  all  is  said  an  '  done. ' 
1 '  E's  a  devil  an'  a  ostrich  an'  a  orphan-child  in  one. ' 

"There  you  have  the  expert  opinion  which  satisfies  the 
requirements  of  Mr.  George  lies,  as  well  as  a  note  which  will 
spur  the  investigators  to  more  thorough  research. " 

"  The  same  writer  may  be  drawn  on  under  the  author  entries 
as  well  as  under  those  for  subject.  In  the  catalogues  of  most 
libraries  may  be  found  the  heading,  '  Roberts,  Frederic  Sleigh 
Roberts,  first  earl,  I  832. '  There  will  occur  a  card  for  "Forty- 
one  Years  in  India, "  and  perhaps  one  or  two  other  books.  In 
my  scheme  another  card  should  be  added  with  the  lines : 
'There's  a  little  red-faced  man 

Which  is  Bobs, 
Rides  the  tallest  '  orse  '  e  can, 

Our  Bobs. 
If  it  bucks  or  kicks  or  rears, 
'  E  can  sit  for  twenty  years, 


36  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

With  a  smile  round  both  '  is  ears, 

Cant  yer,  Bobs ? ' 
If  you  stood  '  im  on  '  is  '  ead, 

Father  Bobs, 
You  could  spill  a  quart  o'  lead 

Outer  Bobs. 
'  E's  been  at  it  thirty  years 
An-amassm'  souveneers 
In  the  way  o'  slugs  an'  spears — 

Ain't  yer,  Bobs?  ' 

n  To  turn  from  men  of  action  to  men  of  letters,  a  brief  charac- 
terization of  an  author  will  be  found  decidedly  helpful  if  inserted 
in  the  catalogue,  neatly  type-written  on  a  card.  For  American 
writers  the  "  Fable  for  Critics  "  offers  many  suggestions.  This 
for  instance,  should  follow  the  name  of  N.  P.  Willis : 

There  is  Willis,  all  natty  and  jaunty  and  gay, 
Who  says  his  best  things  in  so  foppish  a  way, 

With  conceits  and  pet  phrases  so  thickly  o'er-laying   em, 
That  one  hardly  knows  whether  to  thank  him  for  saying  'em  ; 

Over-ornament  ruins  both  poem  and  prose. 
Just  conceive  of  a  Muse  with  a  ring  in  her  nose ! 

"  Even  the  gravest  and  dryest  subjects  can  be  so  illumined  by 
the  sweet  light  of  poetry  that  people  will  begin  to  call  for  books 
that  have  hitherto  been  mere  accumulators  of  dust.  The  American 
Library  Association's  '  List  of  Subject  Headings '  includes  the 
formidable  word  '  Anthropology  '.  What  workman  or  mechanic 
will  ever  be  tempted  by  that  frightful  word  inscribed  though  it 
be  in  letters  of  red,  to  learn  about  those  charming  individuals 
who  '  drew  delightful  mammoths  on  the  borders  of  their  cave '? 

A  poet  comes  to  our  rescue  to  tell  us  of  primitive  man : 

1  He  worshipped  the  rain  and  the  breeze, 
He  worshipped  the  river  that  flows, 

And  the  dawn,  and  the  moon,  and  the  trees, 
And  bogies,  and  serpents,  and  crows; 


THE  CATALOGUE  BEAUTIFUL  37 


He  buried  his  dead  with  their  toes 

Tucked  up — an  original  plan — 
Till  their  knees  came  right  under  their  nose : 

'Twas  the  manner  of  primitive  man  !' 

"  Again,  the  subject  heading  "  Prehistoric  Archaeology  "  never 
allured  a  shop  girl  from  her  mad  pursuit  of  McCutcheon  nor  led 
the  young  lady  from  the  high  school  out  of  the  dangerous  mo- 
rasses of  Marie  Corelli.  How  different  if  she  could  have  been 
made  aware  of  the  fascinating  nature  fakirs  who  tell  of  the 
fauna  of  that  ancient  time  when 

'  There  was  a  little  animal  no  bigger  than  a  fox, 
And  on  five  toes  he  scampered  over  tertiary  rocks ; 

They  called  him  Eohippos,  and  they  called  him  very  small, 
And  they  thought  him  of  no  consequence,  when  they  thought 
of  him  at  all ; 

For  the  lumpish  old  Dinoceras,  and  Coryphadon  so  slow, 
Were  the  heavy  aristocracy  in  the  days  of  long  ago '. 

"  Thus ",  concludes  our  author  in  his  somewhat  florid  vein,  "  a 
dawn  of  gladness  is  breaking,  alike  for  the  public  and  the  weary 
cataloguer.  No  more  will  strong  men  tear  their  hair  and  curse 
when  directed  by  the  loan-desk  assistant  to  look  this  up  in  the 
catalogue,  please.  On  the  contrary,  the  catalogue  will  be  sur- 
rounded daily  by  an  eager  throng  and  its  consultation  will  be 
attended  by  all  the  joy  that  might  come  from  a  perusal  of '  Ele- 
gant Extracts '.  No  more  will  the  cataloguer  be  sicklied  o'er 
with  the  pale  cast  of  Cutter's  rules  nor  be  borne  away  shriek- 
ing when  she  finds  that  all  the  books  laboriously  entered  under 
the  name  B.  L.  Putnam  Weale  were  really  written  by  a  perfid- 
ious man  called  Simpson.  Counting  fly  leaves,  and  recording 
such  matters  as  '  3  p.l.,  xiii,  9,  iv.,  326,  front.,  illus.,  plates, 
diagrs.,  23  1-2  cm1,  will  not  be  the  whole  of  her  existence. 
The  greater  ecstasy  of  literary  research  shall  be  hers,  and  in  her 
eyes  a  brighter  iris  blossom.  " 


MRS.     POMFRET     SMITH    VISITS    THE 
LIBRARY 


"  Just  tell  Miss  Anderson,  that  Mrs.  J.  Pomfret  Smith  is  here, 
will  you  ?  Oh,  here  she  is  now  !  Oh,  my  dear,  you've  got  your 
things  on !  Are  you  going  home  ?  You're  not  very  tired  are 
you  ?  I've  got  to  read  a  paper  before  the  Twenty-Minute  Cul- 
ture Club,  on  the  '  Decadence  of  French  Literature '  and  I 
know  you'll  help  me  look  up  these  books.  You  are  so  much  better 
than  these  girls  out  here  at  the  desk.  I  hope  they  didn't  hear 
me  !  Are  you  very  tired  ?  It  won't  take  you  but  just  a  jiffy,  I'm 
sure.  " 

Miss  Anderson  was  very  tired  indeed.  The  librarian  had 
conceived  the  notion  that  morning  of  holding  an  exhibition  of 
books  and  pictures  on  the  subject  of  Navajo  blankets,  and  she 
had  been  working  at  top  speed  to  get  it  ready.  It  was  now  five 
o'clock,  and  she  had  exactly  two  hours  to  do  three  necessary 
errands,  get  home  to  her  dinner,  and  catch  a  car  which  would 
land  her  at  the  Hubbard  House  Settlement  at  seven  o'clock, 
where  it  would  then  be  her  privilege  to  supply  books  for  two 
hot,  ill-ventilated  hours  to  a  noisy  crowd  of  unwashed  children. 
She  knew  exactly  the  sort  of  headache  and  feeling  of  sticki- 
ness that  would  be  hers  at  nine  that  evening. 

But  she  smiled  pleasantly  at  Mrs.  J.  Pomfret  Smith,  who  had 
already  produced  her  list,  and  begun  to  talk  again.  "  Oh,  dear! 
these  horrid  French  names !  1  can't  manage  them,  but  I've  got 
to  get  this  paper  ready.  Now,  this  says  to  look  up  Alfred  de 
Mewzet  —  he  wrote  novels,  didn't  he,   or   am    I   thinking   of 


MRS.  POMFRET  SMITH  39 

Dammus  ?  Anyhow,  get  me  some  of  his  books  ;  translations,  of 
course,  and  is  Marie  Corelli,  French  ?  She  sounds  so,  doesn't 
she?  And  who  is  Decameron  ?  He  isn't  modern,  is  he?  Some 
of  these  things  are  awful;  I  told  Pomfret  the  other  night  I 
couldn't  see  why  they  were  allowed  in  the  library.  This  outline 
says :  note  Decameron's  influence.  Then  I  want  some  novel, 
by  Lote-eye.  He's  the  man  who  went  crazy  from  drinking 
absinthe  and  shot  himself  in  the  cafe  where  he  used  to  write 
poetry,  isn't  he  ?  Or  was  that  Ouida  ?  No,  she  was  a  woman, 
but  was  she  French  ?  Her  name  was  '  de  la  '  something,  so  I 
suppose  she  was.  " 

Mrs.  Smith  interpolated  these  bits  of  literary  gossip  during 
Miss  Anderson's  trips  between  the  catalogue,  the  book  stacks 
and  the  issue  desk.  The  pages  had  gone  to  their  early  suppers 
all  but  one ;  and  Miss  Anderson  lugged  out  armfuls  of  books 
herself.  The  clock  went  from  quarter  past  to  half  past  five.  She 
had  eaten  her  luncheon  in  ten  minutes  that  noon,  and  the  indi- 
cations were  in  favor  of  about  five  minutes  for  her  dinner.  Mrs. 
Smith  was  still  fresh  however. 

"  There's  a  critic  I  want  to  get  hold  of ;  what's  his  name  ? 
Oh,  yes,  St.  Boove,  have  you  got  any  of  the  books  by  St.  Boove  ? 
I  want  something  to  sum  up  the  whole  period.  Dear  me,  is  that 
clock  right  ?  Why  it's  ten  minutes  to  six !  Take  these  books 
with  me  ? — gracious,  no  !  I  don't  want  them  now,  and  I  couldn't 
carry  all  those.  I'll  just  come  around  next  Tuesday  and  look 
them  over  here.  1  wanted  to  be  sure  you'd  got  them  all,  and 
you've  been  perfectly  lovely.  Now,  you  just  put  them  away 
somewhere,  where  nobody  will  get  any  of  them,  will  you  ?  I 
know  it's  against  the  rules,  but  I  guess  it  will  be  all  right. " 

The  librarian  was  in  his  office  putting  a  final  polish  on  his  annual 
report.  "  Cooperation  and  helpfulness  are  the  keynotes  of  our 
library  service, "  he  wrote  ;  "  Much  valuable  work  has  been 
done  in  affiliation  with  the  study  clubs  of  the  city.  " 


MYTH 


Every  profession  has  its  legendary  characters.  We  are  all 
familiar  with  the  marvellous  lawyer,  who  without  any  other 
preparation  than  the  consumption  of  a  quart  of  whiskey  was  en- 
abled to  carry  on  the  examination  of  witnesses,  to  debate  on  legal 
points,  and  finally,  after  two  or  three  days  without  food  or  sleep, 
to  make  an  impassioned  appeal  to  the  jury,  which  resulted  in  the 
triumphant  acquittal  of  his  obviously  guilty  client.  Then  there  is 
the  doctor  who  in  former  days  astounded  rural  communities  by 
diagnosing  cases  at  ten  miles  distance,  and  predicting  with  absolute 
accuracy  the  day  and  moment  when  his  patient  would  recover. 

Now  without  discussing  whether  library  work  may  claim  to 
be  called  a  profession,  it  has,  at  least,  this  mark  of  one.  It  has 
its  legendary  characters.  They  are  the  omniscient  old  gentlemen 
who  knew  the  entire  contents  of  every  book  in  their  libraries. 
Not  only  that ;  but  their  knowledge  and  memory  were  still  more 
extraordinary.  The  tales  usually  ran  in  form  something  like  this  : 
1  Why,  old  Mr.  Bookworm  has  the  most  marvellous  memory  ! 
If  you  ask  him  where  you  can  get  information  on  any  subject, 
he  will  say,  '  You  go  upstairs,  and  turn  into  the  fourth  alcove  on 
the  right  hand  side.  Look  at  the  shelves  on  the  left  and  count 
three  from  the  top ;  take  down  the  seventeenth  book  from  the 
right — it  is  the  twenth-sixth  from  the  left.  Open  it  at  page  four- 
teen hundred  and  sixty  seven,  which  is  the  left  hand  one.  Run 
down  the  page  until  you  come  to  line  twenty-three.  You  will 
find  there  exactly  what  you  want !'  " 


MYTH  41 

It  may  be  merely  the  envy  of  a  degenerate  race  of  librarians, 
who  know  more  about  catalogue  cards  than  about  books,  which 
prompts  us  to  feel  some  suspicious  misgivings  about  this  old 
gentlemen.  Of  one  thing  we  may  be  assured — if  he  were  alive 
today  even  in  the  present  disgraceful  condition  of  library 
salaries,  he  could  command  an  income  that  would  enable  him  to 
go  in  for  first  folio  Shakespeares,  and  ocean-going  steam  yachts. 
But,  as  we  sometimes  wonder  where  all  this  talk  about  unicorns 
arose  if  they  are  really  (  as  Alice  thought  )  nothing  but  "  fabulous 
monsters ",  so,  we  may  inquire,  is  there  not  some  foundation  for 
the  stories  about  Mr.  Bookworm  ? 

We  will  answer  this  right  away.  There  is.  A  reputation  for 
supernatural  learning  is  sometimes  as  easy  to  gain  as  one  for 
ignorance.  Everyone  has  probably  had  the  experience  of  finding 
himself  regarded  as  an  authority  on  some  subject  when  he  knew 
very  little  about  it.  It  is  only  necessary  that  this  subject  shall  be 
one  of  which  the  average  person  is  in  total  ignorance.  If  you 
know  a  trifle  about  heraldry,  for  instance,  or  edible  mushrooms, 
how  soon  does  it  go  abroad  that  you  know  "  all "  about  it !  So 
with  the  fabulous  librarian.  He  made  a  few  lucky  hits,  induced 
by  the  powers  of  memory  which  long  familiarity  with  books  pro- 
cures, and  immediately  the  myth  arose.  He  was  helped,  too,  by 
the  fact  that  in  his  day  books  were  far  fewer,  human  knowledge 
much  more  limited,  and  the  inquires  which  came  to  him  far  less 
varied  than  is  the  case  today.  We  would  like  to  maintain  a 
respectful  admiration  toward  him.  But  it  must  be  confessed  that 
a  mythical  librarian  of  powers  more  than  human  is  a  fearful 
nuisance  to  those  of  us  who  are  only  mortal. 

For  one  thing,  Mr.  Bookworm  is  probably  responsible  for 
that  famous  remark  which  originated  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
and  is  still  hurled  at  librarians — "  Well,  I  suppose  you  have  read 
all  the  books  in  the  library  ! "  Its  brother  is  like  unto  it — n  It  must 
be  nice  to  be  a  librarian,  and  just  read  all  day  long!"   Then, 


42  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

too,  he  is  to  blame,  when  we  are  expected  to  know  immediately 
whether  our  library  ( which  contains  four  hundred  thousand 
volumes  )  owns  a  certain  book  or  not.  This  is  flattering  to  our 
powers  of  memory,  but  the  diminution  of  respect  that  ensues  when 
we  have  to  consult  the  catalogue  to  find  out,  just  as  if  we  were 
ordinary  human  beings,  is  very  painful,  indeed.  "  Why,  I  thought 
you  would  know  right  away, — old  Mr.  Bookworm  would. " 
1  Yes,  Madam  ",  we  will  shriek  some  day,  "  Bookworm  would 
know,  and  if  I  had  him  here  now,  I'd  stuff  the  book  down  his 
throat ! " 


POEM 

By  Miss  Pansy  Patterson 


Miss  Pansy  Patterson  n  fears  that '  The  Librarian  '  is  a  very 
ill-informed  person,  without  high  ideals. "  She  is  "  especially 
distressed  at  his  erroneous  notions  about  Children's  Librarians.  " 
So  she  sends  a  little  poem  to  correct  these  false  impressions. 
Here  it  is. 

THE  CHILDREN'S  LIBRARIAN 

On  Monday  mornings,  bright  and  fair,  she  takes  her  childish 

band 
To  hear  the  little  birdies  peep,  so  they  may  understand 
That  the  vocalizing  methods  of  the  yellow-crested  wren 
Are  easy  to  distinguish  from  the  common  garden  hen. 

That  afternoon,  at  three  o'clock,  they  fare  unto  the  park 
And  spend  the  happy  moments  till  the  coming  of  the  dark ; 
So   when   they   toddle   home   again,   there's   not   a   child   but 

knows 
That  the  salmon-footed  bullfinch  won't  associate  with  crows. 

On  Tuesdays  you  will  find  her,  she  is  on  the  spot  once  more, 
Expounding  to  her  little  ones  all  kinds  of  useful  lore; 
She  takes  the  purple  pimpernel  and  cuts  it  up  in  bits 
To  show  them  if  they  chew  it  they'll  assuredly  have  fits. 

When  the  clock  on  Wednesday  morning  has  scarcely  sounded 

nine. 
She  has  her  bunch  of  urchins  a-standing  in  a  line, 
A  bee-hive  is  before  them,  and  by  lure  of  cakes  and  jumbles 
They  learn  to  tell  the  honey-bee  from  ordinary  Bumbles. 


44  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

Now  Thursday  is  the  day  of  days  that's  ever  set  apart, — 
Devoted  to  the  practice  of  the  flower  of  her  art. 
She  draws  them  all  around  her,  on  the  floor  she  sits,  herself, 
Regaling  them  with  stories  of  hippogriff  and  elf. 

On  Friday  she  is  at  it  hard,  from  early  morn  till  night, 
Imparting  unto  little  boys  how  bad  it  is  to  fight ; 
Discoursing  unto  little  girls  of  how  to  dress  a  doll, 
And  warning  both  the  sexes   gainst  the  snares  of^ Alcohol. 

With  ruthless  hand,  she  confiscates  the  vicious  cigarette, 
And  expurgates  such  phrases  as  "  I  reckon  "  and  "  I  bet "  ; 
She  gives  a  little  homily  on  "  Books  That  Are  a  Sin  " 
And  pours  the  vials  of  her  wrath  on  "  Huckleberry  Finn ". 

On  Saturday  she  leads  a  class  in  making  paper  fans, 
And  sanitary  pies  of  mud  in  hygienic  pans, 
In  weaving  little  dinky  wreaths  of  buttercups  and  myrtles 
And  teaching  tricks  of  kindliness  to  pollywogs  and  turtles. 

And  if,  by  chance,  she  finds  the  time,  she  puts  it  in  (for  looks) 
In  furnishing  their  infant  hands  with  infant  story-books. 


"  THAT  GIRL  AT  THE  LIBRARY 


An  extract  from  the  diary  of  Miss  Helen  Martin,  assistant  in 

the   circulating  division  of  the Public  Library.    The  entry 

is  dated  Jan.  30,  1909,  and  it  was  written  on  Jan.  31st. 

When  I  got  home  last  night  I  found  a  letter  from  Mabel 
Oliver.  I  did  not  open  it  then,  but  I  did  this  morning.  It  was 
mostly  about  her  visit  in  New  York,  and  the  plays  she  has  seen. 
One  part  appealed  to  me  particularly.  It  was  :  "  I  wish  you  would 
tell  me  about  your  library  work.  It  must  be  awfully  interesting, 
seeing  so  many  of  the  new  books,  and  then  you  musfmeet  some 
weird  people.  Do  tell  me  about  it.  "  Well,  I  started  to  write  her 
about  it,  but  I  tore  the  letter  up,  thinking,  "  What's  the  use  ?  " 
I  believe  it  would  do  no  good  to  give  her  the  idea  that  there  is 
nothing  to  library  work  besides  the  return  desk.  I  know  that 
there  is  something  else,  though  I  have  not  experienced  much  of 
it  so  far.  I  have  had  a  year  of  the  circulating  division  now — 
counting  my  six  months'  apprenticeship.  If  everything  goes 
well,  if  the  city  council  grants  the  appropriations,  if  Miss  Macom- 
ber  does  not  get  too  ruffled,  if  Mr.  Pierce  does  not  change  his 
mind  (  as  he  usually  does ) — if  I  do  not  make  any  very  bad 
breaks — and  a  few  more  "  ifs " ,  I  ought  to  get  that  promotion 
into  the  reference  department  next  June.  There  I  may  see  a  little 
more  of  the  insides  of  books,  and  have  some  of  the  library  work  of 
which  I  dreamed.  In  the  meantime  I  am  going  to  write  about 
yesterday's  experience  in  this  diary,  for  my  own  amusement. 
Perhaps  it  was  not  an  "  average  "  day.    Certainly  I  have  never 


46  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

had  Mrs.  Pomfret  Smith,  Miss  Cecil  Calvert,  Mrs.  Douglas 
Boomwhacker,  Mr.  Paddock,  Mr.  Bakkus,  Mr.  Titewad,  and 
the  Clarke  twins,  all  in  one  day  before.  Moreover,  it  was  a 
record  breaking  day  for  circulation,  and  so  I  suppose  there  were 
more  books  returned  than  usual.  But  Miss  Barlow,  who  has 
been  in  the  division  seven  years,  said  it  was  nothing  extraordinary, 
and  that  she  had  known  people  compared  with  whom  Mrs. 
Boomwhacker  and  the  rest  are  as  turtle  doves.  So  I  don't  imagine 
there  is  anything  unfair  in  recording  what  happened  to  me 
yesterday. 

The  morning  really  should  have  been  free  for  me,  and  as  I 
was  on  duty  until  nine  in  the  evening  I  was  not  due  to  arrive  at 
the  library  until  one  o'clock.  But  Mr.  Pierce  is  getting  up  his 
exhibition  of  books  on  "  domestic  science  "  and  he  is  already  busy 
on  an  article  for  the  Library  Journal  about  it.  Wednesday  he 
called  for  volunteers  to  work  over  time  on  this  exhibition.  Some- 
one had  volunteered  from  all  the  other  divisions,  and  Miss 
Macomber  intimated  pretty  strongly  that  one  of  us  had  better 
do  so.  Miss  Abrahams  and  Miss  Thomas  were  on  duty  at  the 
desks  in  the  morning,  anyhow  ;  Miss  Sullivan  is  just  getting  over 
the  measles  and  isn't  very  strong  yet,  so  that  left  only  Miss 
Merryfield  and  me.  No  one  ever  expects  Louise  Merryfield  to  do 
any  more  than  she  has  to,  as  her  uncle  is  a  trustee  of  the  library. 
Mr.  Pierce  and  Miss  Macomber  think  they  are  quite  lucky 
when  Miss  Merryfield  does  any  work  at  all,  and  as  she  gets  a 
promotion  as  often  as  there  are  any  to  be  had,  she  herself 
does  not  feel  the  need  of  extra  exertion.  It  was  distinctly  up 
to  me,  so  I  presented  a  smiling  face  yesterday  morning  at  nine 
o'clock  and  five  of  us  spent  three  hours  in  the  exhibition  room 
up  stairs.  It  was  so  cold  there  at  first  that  we  all  wore  coats,  but 
by  standing  on  one  foot  at  a  time,  and  waving  our  arms  about 
we  managed  to  keep  warm.  We  got  the  books  arranged,  the 
special  labels  on  them,  the  lists  posted,  the  notices,  pictures,  and 


"THAT  GIRL  AT  THE  LIBRARY"  47 

posters  up,  and  nearly  everything  done  by  half-past  twelve.  At 
eleven,  Dennis,  in  response  to  our  requests  for  more  heat,  got 
the  steam  radiator  into  full  operation  and  the  temperature  went 
to  85  degrees.  When  we  left  the  room  at  12.30,  Mrs.  Green- 
wood, the  shelf-lister,  and  I  decided  we  didn't  want  any  lunch- 
eon as  we  both  had  splitting  headaches.  We  spent  the  half  hour 
walking  around  outdoors,  and  came  back  at  one  o'clock.  1  helped 
Miss  Macomber  on  the  month's  statistics  until  three  o'clock,  and 
then  relieved  Miss  Merryheld  at  the  return  desk.  She  was 
excused  early,  to  go  to  the  Elmendorf  lecture. 

The  person  at  the  return  desk  sits  on  a  high  stool  and  presides 
over  four  or  five  large  trays  of  cards.  These  cards  are  set  on  end 
and  arranged  by  date.  Each  one  of  them  belongs  in  a  little 
pocket  in  the  back  of  a  book  which  is  out  of  the  library  on 
loan.  When  a  book  is  returned  you  have  to  open  that  book, 
notice  the  date  on  which  it  was  loaned  ( this  date  having  been 
stamped  on  a  slip  of  paper  in  the  back  of  the  book  )  find  the 
card  among  the  thousands  in  the  trays,  and  put  it  back  in  its  little 
pocket,  having  first  removed  another  card  (  the  "  reader's  card  ") 
from  that  pocket  and  stamped  on  that  (  with  a  miserable  little 
stamp  attached  to  a  lead  pencil,  which  sometimes  stamps  clearly 
and  usually  does  not )  the  date  on  which  the  book  is  returned. 
I  have  read  over  that  sentence  four  times  and  I  do  not  believe 
that  anyone  could  exactly  understand  it.  But  I  understand  it  and 
so  will  anyone  who  has  ever  performed  the  ghoulish  operation. 
The  others  don't  matter.  Then  you  give  the  "  reader's  card  "  back 
to  the  person  who  has  returned  the  book  —  unless  he  has  had  the 
book  out  longer  than  the  rules  allow.  In  that  case  you  tell  him,  or 
her,  how  much  he  owes  the  library  —  at  two  cents  a  day,  and  in 
ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred  he  pays  over  that  money 
promptly  and  without  a  fuss.  Often  he  has  computed  it  himself 
and  has  the  four  or  six  or  eight  cents,  or  whatever  it  is,  all 
ready.   In  the  other  case  he,  or  she,  makes  some  kind  of  a  fuss. 


48  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 


On  a  "  rush-day n  when  there  are  over  two  thousand  books 
returned,  there  is  the  possibility  of  about  twenty  fusses  during 
the  day,  or  say,  fifteen  between  three  and  five  in  the  afternoon 
and  seven  and  half-past  eight  in  the  evening,  which  are  particu- 
larly busy  periods.  The  books,  as  fast  as  they  are  returned, 
must  be  hastily  glanced  at,  to  see  if  they  have  suffered  any 
obvious  injury,  and  then  placed  on  a  truck  which  is  wheeled  off 
by  a  messenger  as  soon  as  it  gets  full,  to  be  replaced  by  an 
empty  one.  I  have  known  a  decent  looking  man  to  return  a  book 
which  was  simply  dripping  with  mud  and  muddy  water  and  to 
declare  up  and  down  that  there  was  nothing  at  all  the  matter 
with  it,  that  he  had  not  dropped  it  into  a  mud  puddle,  and  that 
we  were  a  lot  of  cranky  old  maids  anyhow,  and  if  we 
didn't  keep  quiet  and  give  him  another  book  and  say  no  more 
about  it  he  would  write  to  Andrew  Carnegie  "  and  have  the 
whole  lot  of  us  fired  ".  The  number  of  persons,  by  the  way,  who 
are  on  intimate  terms  with  Mr.  Carnegie  is  appalling.  One  old 
woman,  who  insists  on  abstracting  the  directory  from  the  regis- 
tration desk  just  when  it  is  most  needed,  gets  a  letter  from  him 
nearly  every  day,  and  she  informed  me  last  week  that "  Andhrew 
had  got  his  eye  on  yez  ". 

But  it  is  three  o'clock  on  Suturday  afternoon,  and  I  am 
beginning  at  the  return  desk.  Books  are  coming  in  fast  now,  for 
everyone  is  returning  what  he  had, and  getting  another  for  Sunday. 
By  about  half-past  three  a  line  has  formed  extending  nearly  out 
to  the  door.  In  some  libraries  1  believe  this  line  never  occurs — 
they  use  a  shorter  process  in  the  return  of  their  books.  Yesterday 
there  were  forty  to  fifty  people  in  line  several  times  during  the 
day.  There  are  some  who  object  to  standing  in  line.  1  am 
grieved  to  say,  and  I  never  would  admit  it  to  a  man,  but  these 
are  usually  women.  In  fact  for  downright  disagreeableness — 
pretty  cattishness — women  are  the  worst.  Men  sometimes  swear 
at  you,  and  I  have  had  experience  with  one  or  two  drunken 


"THAT  GIRL  AT  THE  LIBRARY"  49 

ones — witness  Mr.  Baklcus  last  night.  But  the  women !  Well, 
take  Miss  Cecil  Calvert — a  curious  looking  creature  in  a  purple 
gown.  She  arrived  about  quarter  to  four,  when  I  was  taking 
in  books,  leaning  and  stretching  forward  and  back  over  the 
trays,  stamping  and  handing  back  cards  and  calling  frantically 
to  Jimmie  to  bring  another  truck.  She  wouldn't  take  her  place 
at  the  end  of  the  line,  not  she !  She  tried  to  elbow  her  way 
into  several  crevices,  but  was  promptly  baffled  by  persons  who 
were  already  there.  Then  she  came  to  the  head  of  the  line  and 
tried  to  hand  her  book  over  the  head  of  the  man  whose 
book  I  was  at  the  moment  discharging.  Now,  Miss  Macomber 
has  forbidden  our  taking  books  in  this  way,  for  just  as  soon  as 
the  people  in  line  see  it  succeed,  the  line  breaks  and  the  whole 
forty  swarm  about  the  desk  in  a  confused  mob.  So  I  kept  on 
taking  in  books  and  ignored  the  copy  of  "Septimus"  which  she 
pushed  under  my  nose.  This  made  her  furious,  but  I  could  not 
hear  what  she  said,  and  presently  she  went  back  to  the  end  of 
the  line.  By  chance,  the  last  person  in  the  line  was  a  little 
darkey,  about  ten  years  old.  This  caused  her  to  boil  over,  and 
she  came  back  to  the  desk  and  slammed  her  novel  down  on  it. 
Did  i  know  who  she  was  ?  Did  I  know  that  she  was  Miss  Cecil 
Calvert,  and  a  member  of  one  of  the  first  families  of  Queen 
Elizabeth  County,  Maryland  ?  Was  she  to  be  kept  standing  in 
line  behind  a  little  nigger  ?  She  reckoned  she  would  see  about 
that.  And  she  gave  the  book  a  vicious  shove,  so  that  it  fell 
into  my  lap,  and  then  she  stalked  out  of  the  library. 

The  man  at  the  head  of  the  line  was  a  common-looking 
individual,  and  when  Miss  Calvert  had  gone  he  remarked  sym- 
pathetically "  I  hope  you  don't  have  many  of  the  first  families, 
Miss. "  The  next  man  was  Mr.  1  itewad.  His  book  was  a  day 
overdue,  and  I  informed  him  that  the  fine  was  two  cents.  He 
said  he  had  never  received  any  notice  that  the  book  was  over- 
due and  that  he  didn't  intend  to  pay  it.    It  was  not  the  money 


50  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 


he  cared  about,  but  the  principle,  he  said.  I  told  him  that  even 
if  the  notice  had  not  arrived,  that  he  was  supposed  to  keep 
track  of  the  time  himself.  He  still  refused  to  pay,  and  told  me 
to  give  him  back  his  reader's  card  so  he  could  get  another  book.  I 
replied  that  I  was  forbidden  to  return  any  card  on  which  fines 
were  unpaid,  whereupon  he  spluttered,  snapped  his  fingers  at 
me  and  said :  n  Come,  come,  young  woman,  give  me  my  card, 
give  me  my  card  ! n  As  I  did  not  do  so,  he  went  away  in  search 
of  the  "  real  librarian  ",  as  he  called  him,  to  make  a  complaint, 
and  I  have  not  seen  Mr.  Titewad  since.  The  rest  of  the  people 
in  line  had  heard  Miss  Calvert's  outcries,  and  were  inclined  to 
be  agreeable  to  me.  Somehow  the  announcement  that  one 
belongs  to  the  first  families  never  wins  a  great  deal  of  admiration. 
The  line  cleared  quickly  and  easily.  One  of  the  last  ones  in  it  was 
Mrs.  Marietta  Cooper  Collyer,  the  author.  She  is  an  old  dear. 
She  comes  into  the  library  nearly  every  day,  always  goes 
away  with  three  or  four  books,  and  though  she  is  over  eighty 
years  old  never  makes  any  trouble  at  all.  All  of  the  girls  like  her 
and  will  do  anything  for  her. 

A  line  formed  again  about  four  o'clock  and  at  the  very  head 
of  it  was  Mrs.  J.  Pomfret  Smith.  She  returned  her  book,  and 
began :  "  Have  you  read  this  ?  It  is  Corell-eye's  '  Holy  Orders  '. 
It  is  just  lovely.  I  read  all  of  her  books.  Don't  you  ?  I  wonder 
if  you  can  get  me  another  of  hers.  Oh,  I  just  read  them  over  and 
over.  Now,  there  was  '  The  Sorrows  of  Satan  '.  Lots  of  folks 
didn't  like  it,  but  I  did.  Her  books  have  such  a  lovely  moral  in 
'em.  Did  you  read  '  Vendetta  '  ?  I  read  that  four  times.  Of 
course,  it  was  horrible  and  all  that,  but  I  think  that  man  was  right. 
Don't  you  ?  "  While  Mrs.  Smith  was  discussing  Marie  Corelli, 
the  line  was  surging  behind  her,  a  very  small  man  with  three  heavy 
volumes  was  swaying  under  their  weight  as  he  held  them 
toward  me  at  arm's  length,  and  a  massive  woman  with  a  pink 
feather  boa  was  apparently  about  to  beat  Mrs.  Smith  over  the 


"THAT  GIRL  AT  THE  LIBRARY"  51 

head  with  an  umbrella.  I  told  Mrs.  Smith  that  I  had  not  read 
"  Holy  Orders  n ;  that  she  could  get  any  book  she  wished  from 
the  issue  desk;  and  would  she  kindly  move  along,  as  there  were 
a  number  of  people  waiting  behind  her.  n  Oh  dear, n  she  said, 
n  have  I  kept  anyone  waiting  ?  I  am  so  sorry !  Cant  you  give 
me  any  books  ?  Oh,  at  the  other  desk  !  I  see.  Well,  I'll  go  there. 
Only,  I  don't  know  that  girl.  You  must  read  '  The  Sorrows  of 
Satan  '.  Now,  remember.  Let  me  see,  this  is  my  card.  I'm  always 
so  afraid  I'll  lose  it ;  it's  an  awful  bother.  Here  it  is  and  there's 
my  purse,  and  here's  my  edging.  Well,  goodby ! "  She  went 
away,  and  I  took  the  three  heavy  books  from  the  small  man. 

Next  after  him  came  the  massive  person  with  the  pink  boa. 
She  handed  me  her  book  and  while  I  was  discharging  it,  leaned 
over  the  desk  so  that  her  umbrella,  which  she  had  under  her  arm, 
gave  me  a  violent  jab  in  the  face.  "  Ain't  that '  Holy  Orders  '  over 
there  ?  I've  been  trying  to  get  that  for  two  weeks.  Now  you  just 
give  it  to  me  right  now  ! "  I  had  observed  her  name  on  her 
card  —  it  was  Mrs.  Douglas  Boomwhacker.  I  had  often  heard 
of  her  from  the  other  girls — they  usually  ran  when  they  saw  her 
coming,  but  I  never  had  met  her  before.  Her  book  was  four  days 
overdue  and  I  told  her  the  fine  amounted  to  eight  cents.  "  That's 
all  right,  you'll  get  your  eight  cents  quick  enough,  don't  you  worry 
over  that.  I  suppose  you  girls  get  all  the  chewin'  gum  you  want, 
havin'  all  this  money  handed  in  here.  Just  give  me  that  '  Holy 
Orders '  will  you  ?  "  I  told  her  that  I  couldn't  issue  books  at 
this  desk.  "  Why  not, "  she  snapped,  "  piece  of  silly  red  tape  !  n 
And  moreover  I  told  her  that  by  a  rule  of  the  library  a  book  could 
not  be  issued  again  on  the  day  it  is  returned.  She  wanted  to  know 
why  not.  I  told  her  that  it  had  to  be  examined,  classified,  and 
go  back  to  the  shelves  with  the  others  that  were  returned.  Really, 
there  is  also  another  reason  for  the  rule — it  is  to  prevent  little  cliques 
from  keeping  a  book  among  themselves  weeks  at  a  time,  but  I 
thought  it  useless  to  explain  that.    At  the  same  time  I  felt  sorry 


52  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

for  her,  for  it  must  have  been  irritating  to  see  the  book  she  had 
been  after  so  long  and  not  be  allowed  to  take  it.  But  I  soon  lost 
whatever  sympathy  I  felt,  for  she  suddenly  leaned  over  the  desk 
and  made  a  grab  for  the  book.  1  removed  it  from  her  reach  and 
put  it  out  of  harm's  way,  but  I  was  not  quick  enough  to  catch  a 
tray  of  cards  which  she  upset  in  her  sudden  manouever.  (  It  took 
two  of  us  half  an  hour  to  arrange  the  cards,  and  the  work  of 
the  desk  was  confused  and  delayed  all  day.)  Mrs.  Boomwhacker 
grew  crimson  when  I  took  the  book  away,  and  turned  on  me : 
"  You  young  snip  in  glasses  !  What  do  you  mean  ?  Give  me  that 
book  this  minute !"  I  told  her  the  rules  forbade  my  doing  so. 
Goodness  knows  I  hate  the  sound  of  that  word  "  rules  "  myself,  and 
it  always  infuriates  the  public.  "  Who  made  the  rule  ?  "  snarled 
Mrs  Boomwhacker,  n  did  you  ? "  I  said  that  I  did  not,  and  she 
remarked  that  she  was  going  to  write  to  the  papers  about  it.  Was 
this  a  free  library  or  were  we  running  it  for  our  own  fun  ?  Didn't 
we  have  anything  to  do  but  make  rules  ?  In  the  end  she  tore  up 
her  card  and  threw  the  pieces  in  my  lap  and  walked  out,  fuming 
with  rage.  Miss  Barlow  says  that  it  is  the  fourth  card  she  has  torn 
up,  that  she  will  come  back  and  pay  the  fee  for  a  new  card  in 
about  a  week.  And  because  this  is  a  "  free  public  library  "  and 
Mr.  Boomwhacker's  brother  is  an  alderman,  she  will  be  allowed 
to  repeat  this  scene  to  her  heart's  content.  It  is  the  third  time  she 
has  given  an  exhibition  over  this  same  business  of  trying  to  get 
a  book  that  has  just  been  returned.  She  always  tries  it  with  one 
of  the  new  attendants,  says  Miss  Barlow. 

Of  course,  during  the  afternoon  and  evening  there  came 
scores  of  pleasant,  courteous  people,  who  handed  in  their  books, 
took  their  cards  and  went  away.  But  when  one's  nerves  are  tired, 
when  one  has  been  working  for  hours  in  a  badly  ventilated  room, 
little  incidents  like  Miss  Calvert  and  Mrs.  Boomwhacker  make 
an  impression.  Sometimes  I  wonder  whether  the  feverish  anxiety 
Mr.  Pierce  displays  to  get  people  to  come  to  the  library  has  really 


"THAT  GIRL  AT  THE   LIBRARY"  53 

increased  its  value.  Of  course  the  use  of  books  is  very  much 
greater-  twenty  years  ago  the  library  must  have  been  more  dead 
than  alive.  But  I  cannot  help,  now  and  then,  having  a  suspicion 
that  such  a  desire  to  get  people  to  come  for  something  free,  has 
cheapened  the  library  terribly.  I  wonder  whether  the  absence  of 
nearly  all  restrictions  has  not  attracted  a  class  who  want  no 
restrictions,  but  their  own  sweet  will.  Certainly,  the  inventory  of 
the  open  shelf-room  was  stopped  suddenly  by  Mr.  Pierce's 
orders,  and  if  I  could  gather  anything  from  a  few  guarded  remarks 
which  Miss  Macomber  uttered,  there  was  an  appalling  state  of 
things  there.  These  are  heretical  sentiments,  and  they  would 
never  put  me  in  favor  with  Mr.  Pierce. 

At  six  o'clock  there  was  a  lull,  and  Miss  Barlow  and  I  had 
supper  in  the  basement  dining  room.  It  was  a  dismal  meal,  out 
of  paper  bags,  and  cheered  only  by  tea  made  on  the  oil  stove. 
From  seven  to  nine  the  rush  went  on  again.  A  man  named 
Paddock  tried  to  get  me  into  an  argument  because  I  would  not 
renew  for  him  a  "  seven-day  book.  "  He  called  loudly  for  the 
librarian,  and  Mr.  Hobart,  the  assistant  librarian  was  sent  for. 
They  drifted  away  in  a  discussion,  and  I  was  amused  to  hear 
him  call  Mr.  Hobart  a  "fat-headed,  two  cent  tyrant".  The 
Clarke  twins  took  out  a  boy's  book,  decided  they  didn't  want 
it,  and  knowing  that  it  could  not  be  returned  until  Monday, 
conceived  the  neat  idea  of  altering  the  date  on  their  card  and 
on  the  slip.  They  took  it  into  the  reading  room,  and  with  the 
aid  of  a  knife  and  a  fountain-pen  made  a  sufficiently  good  imita- 
tion of  the  blue  rubber  stamp  date  to  cause  me  to  search  for  some 
ten  minutes  for  the  card,  before  the  imposture  was  discovered. 
A  very  intoxicated  man  named  Jacob  Bakkus  positively  refused 
to  pay  a  fine  and  as  he  was  exceedingly  disagreeable  and  as  I 
was  tired  to  death,  he  got  away  without  paying  the  two  cents. 
For  which  I  was  sharply  reprimanded  by  Miss  Macomber.  From 
eight  till  past  nine  o'clock  there  was  no  rest.    It  was  a  constant 


54  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

reach  for  the  book,  reach  for  the  card,  hand  back  the  book. 
All  sense  of  people  as  separate  individuals  went  from  me — there 
was  only  a  long  drawn  out  monster,  a  sort  of  boa-constrictor,  or 
crocodile-like  creature  called  "  the  public  ",  which  forever  crawled 
slowly  up  to  my  desk,  pushed  sticky  books  at  me,  and  came 
again  with  more  books.  The  blurred  figures  on  the  cards  grew 
into  a  blue  fog,  my  forehead  was  tight  with  headache,  and  I 
slipped  and  fumbled  with  my  date-stamp.  Long  after  I  had  gone 
home,  and  gone  to  bed,  I  could  see  the  unending  line  of 
people  stretching  out  in  front  of  me,  and  I  saw  it  at  intervals  all 
night. 


THE  MAN  BEHIND  THE  ENCYCLOPEDIA 


Mr.  Bruce  Femald  occupies  a  position  in  a  certain  public 
library  which  is  professionally  described  as  that  of  "  reference 
librarian ".  It  is  usually  considered  one  of  the  enviable  posts  in 
library  work,  for  it  is  the  privilege  of  such  as  he  not  merely  "  to 
hand  out  books  over  a  counter,"  but  to  hold  the  cup  of  know- 
ledge itself  to  the  lips  of  the  thirsty,  and  discharge  the  functions 
of  high  priest  of  the  Pierian  spring.  To  his  lot  it  falls  to  "  inter- 
pret "  dictionaries,  encyclopedias  and  other  weighty  volumes  to 
the  seeker  after  wisdom,  and  to  aid  the  student  in  his  researches. 
This  student  may  be  of  the  "  serious  "  variety,  revered  by  librar- 
ians, or  he  may  be  a  casual  inquirer  who  enters  the  library  but 
to  ask  a  single  simple  question,  then  to  go  forth  forever. 

Should  there  ever  be  a  school  established,  especially  to  train 
persons  who  wish  to  learn  the  elements  of  this  kind  of  library 
work,  it  will  probably  have  engraved  over  its  doors  the  saying 
of  Dr.  Johnson  about  the  two  kinds  of  knowledge — the  first 
being  when  you  know  a  thing  itself,  the  second  when  you  know 
where  you  can  find  it  out.  The  second  kind  is  supposed  to  be 
Mr.  Fernald's  stock-in-trade.  It  sometimes  fails  him,  and  even 
after  he  has  had  fifty  or  sixty  years  of  experience  it  will  fail  him 
occasionally.  In  much  that  is  written  professionally  about  the 
11  qualifications  of  the  reference  librarian  "  it  is  demanded  not  only 
that  he  be  a  person  of  "  unfailing  tact  and  courtesy  ",  but  that  he 
be  also  endowed  with  a  degree  of  omniscience  above  that  of 
the  archangels.     It  is  well  to  set  the  ideal  high,  to  hitch  our  wagon 


56  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

to  a  star,  but  after  all  it  is  a  wagon  we  are  to  hitch — not  a  steam- 
calliope  nor  a  chariot  of  fire.  One  of  Conan  Doyle's  medical 
stories  tells  of  a  young  doctor  who,  when  suddenly  called  to 
see  his  first  patient,  went  half  expecting  to  have  to  perform  a 
trephining.  The  patient  had  the  gout. 

It  is  not  surprising  if  a  neophyte  reference- librarian  taking  his 
seat  in  the  reading-room  and  looking  to  see  Professor  Harnack 
rush  in  with  an  abstruse  question  in  Chaldaic  transliteration,  is 
somewhat  disgusted  when  a  schoolboy  enters  and  asks  for  last 
week's  Puck.  He  need  not  despair  - —  some  puzzles  worthy  of 
his  mental  furniture  will  come  to  him  before  long,  and  every  bit 
of  information  that  he  ever  gathered  anywhere  will  be  of  use. 
Much  that  he  studied  in  the  library  school  about  foreign  biblio- 
graphy will  be  of  service  to  him,  once  every  five  years  or  so  ;  many 
things  that  he  reads  in  the  morning  paper  he  will  need  to  use  that 
same  day.  Both  matters  are  important.  It  would  be  a  grievous 
thing  if  he  could  not  talk  among  his  colleagues  of  "  Antonio 
Vetus  ",  "  Petzholdt ",  and  "  Brunet ",  as  if  those  gentlemen  were 
in  the  habit  of  dropping  in  to  tea  every  day  or  so.  And  it  would 
be  a  bad  thing  for  his  own  work  if  he  were  not  informed  upon 
the  questions  of  the  day. 

Mr.  Fernald  has  to  deal  with  as  many  kinds  of  people  as  of 
books.  There  are  the  frankly  ignorant  or  uninformed  ;  the 
half  baked  pretenders  to  knowledge  ;  and  the  really  learned. 
He  is  able  to  help  the  first  kind  ;  the  last  named  are  of  much 
benefit  to  him.  The  others  furnish  him  with  exasperation  and 
amusement,  and  they  aid  in  the  growth  of  his  soul.  There  is  no 
work  in  the  world  exactly  similar  to  his ;  no  point  of  view  pre- 
cisely the  same.  From  it  he  can  observe  with  amazement  the 
chaotic  and  changing  systems  of  education,  and  hear  its  doctors 
disagree.  He  can  see  library  work  rising  suddenly  from  discon- 
nected units  into  an  embryonic  "  science  "  ;  young,  eager  to  try  a 
new  thing,  to  run  a  little  while  in  this  or  that  track,  and  then  to 


THE  MAN   BEHIND  THE  ENCYCLOPEDIA  57 

drop  them,  and  shift  its  course.  Some  of  his  comments,  written 
in  a  letter  to  a  friend  about  five  weeks  ago,  we  are  allowed  to 
quote. 

n  This  is  a  hot  night,  past  nine  o'clock,  and  the  reading-room 
is  nearly  empty.  I  am  breaking  the  library's  rules  in  writing  this 
letter,  but  the  few  persons  who  remain  are  sunk  in  a  comatose 
state  over  the  illustrated  papers.  They  are  unlikely  to  observe 
that  I  am  not  obeying  Mr.  Dwight's  precept  that  a  reference 
librarian  should  occupy  himself  with  library  work,  while  main- 
taining a  degage  air,  so  that  people  who  wish  his  services  will 
not  have  to  apologize  for  interrupting  him.  Just  how  to  do  any 
work  worth  anything  and  at  the  same  time  appear  quite  alert 
and  open  to  inquiries,  is  something  that  Mr.  Dwight  may  have 
solved,  but  I  am  free  to  confess  that  it  remains  a  mystery  to  me. 
However,  at  the  really  busy  times  I  do  not  get  a  chance  to  sit 
down  at  all,  so  there  can  be  no  cause  for  suspicion  then  in  the 
minds  of  patrons  that  we  spend  our  time  '  just  in  readin'  books.  ' 
It  is  frightfully  hot  tonight,  and  numerous  insects  whiz  and  buzz 
cheerfully  around  my  desk-light.  I  turned  an  electric  fan  in  this 
direction  until  I  got  a  severe  crick  in  the  back  of  my  neck ; 
then  I  had  to  switch  it  off  and  put  up  with  the  heat  and  the 
critters." 

"The  big,  brown-bearded  German  who  spends  every  even- 
ing here  from  seven  to  nine,  came  in  tonight  as  usual,  and  stood 
near  my  desk.  I  was  aware  of  him  before  he  spoke  or  came 
into  sight,  for  he  belongs  to  some  sect  which  has  scruples  against 
bathtubs, — but  he  is  a  good  fellow  at  a  distance — and  I  like  to 
talk  to  him.  He  mopped  his  brow,  and  gleamed  at  me  through 
his  spectacles.  '  Ach  ',  he  began,  '  dis  vas  dropical  !  Die  young 
voman  oudt  dere  asked  me  tit  I  vant  '  Der  Chungle '  to  read  ! 
I  haf  toldt  her  no  ;  dere  vas  Chungle  enough  for  me  all  aroundt ! 
Ho  !  Ho  !  How  vas  dot  ?  See  here  vat  I  haf — '  Die  Ameri- 
caner '  ,  by  Munsterberg.    You   haf  peen  at  Harfard — tit  you 


58  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

know  Munsterberg  ?  Veil,  he  iss  all  right,  but  he  iss  too  fond 
of  Villum.  Who  ?  Of  Villum — der  Kaiser.  See  here,  dere  iss 
a  baper  calldt  'Der  Bo-o-okmann  ' — haf  you  got  him  ? '  I  found 
him  the  Bookman,  while  he  looked  at  a  copy  of  the  Ladies'  Home 
Journal  which  a  woman  had  just  left  at  my  desk.  I  offered  him 
that ;  but  saying  he  did  not  want  '  her ',  he  went  away  to  a  desk, 
where  he  sat  for  two  hours,  breathing  heavily,  and  reading  with 
evident  pleasure.  " 

"  This  has  been  a  busy  day  as  well  as  a  hot  one.  The  schools 
are  now  in  full  swing,  and  we  have  a  little  one  of  our  own. 
That  is  to  say,  we  have  a  class  of  '  apprentices ' — fourteen 
women  and  one  lone  boy — who  are  learning  library  work  by 
1  actual  experience  '.  They  are  farmed  out  in  twos  and  threes  on 
the  various  departments  of  the  library,  and  I  have  two  in  my 
care.  Every  three  or  four  days  they  meet  together  for  a  lecture 
from  Mr.  Dwight,  or  some  of  the  rest  of  us.  I  feel  some  diffi- 
dence in  lecturing  on  a  subject  of  which  I  have  such  a  tremen- 
dous lot  to  learn,  to  a  class  of  persons  one  or  two  of  whom  left 
school  when  I  was  being  inspected  by  relatives  and  friends  to 
see  what  color  my  hair  was  going  to  be.  Mr.  Dwight  gave 
them  an  introductory  talk  on  Monday.  When  he  assured  them 
that  they  were  beginning  a  kind  of  work  that  was  its  own  reward, 
and  that  they  must  not  brood  too  much  over  the  subject  of  salaries, 
1  thought  1  noticed  a  curious  twitching  about  the  corners  of  the 
mouth  among  some  of  the  members  of  the  library  staff.  Perhaps 
they  remembered  that  dark  day  last  June  when  it  was  announced 
that  the  appropriations  for  the  City  Council  for  next  year  left  the 
chief  librarian's  salary  at  $4000,  instead  of  accepting  the  trustees' 
estimate  of  $5000." 

11  The  two  apprentices  who  have  fallen  to  my  lot  are  quite 
dissimilar.  One  is  a  girl  of  what  is  usually  called  the  '  society  ' 
type.  Why  she  has  gone  into  library  work  is  a  matter  for  won- 
der.   It  certainly  cannot  be  for  the  small  amount  of  money — 


THE  MAN   BEHIND  THE  ENCYCLOPEDIA  59 

when  even  that  amount  is  all  in  the  future  and  uncertain. 
Apprentices,  as  you  have  probably  guessed,  work  for  nothing. 
This  young  lady  has  lived  in  that  part  of  the  country  where  the 
average  girl  has  the  '  West  Point  habit ',  and  when  one's  maiden 
fancies  have  played  around  that  gorgeous  type  of  youth,  delib- 
erately to  throw  herself  among  bespectacled  librarians  is  an  act 
savoring  of  madness.  She  regards  me  with  open  scorn.  While 
I  am  delivering  the  most  weighty  sentences  concerning  Littre's 
Dictionary  or  the  International  Encyclopedia,  I  observe  that  she 
is  apparently  wondering  how  any  live  man  can  spend  his  time 
among  such  things  when  he  might  be  wearing  a  lovely  gray  coat 
with  little  tails,  white  duck  trousers  and  have  a  beautiful  hollow 
in  his  back.  She  looks  up  the  questions  which  I  set  her  in  a  listless 
sort  of  way,  too  proud  to  do  bad  work,  too  blase  to  show  any 
interest  in  it,  and  she  customarily  refers  to  the  '  A.  L.  A. 
Catalogue'  (  Great  Heavens  !  )  as  '  that  old  green  book  ' !  " 

"  The  other  is  an  eager  and  intelligent  woman,  some  fifteen 
years  older  than  Miss  Van  Ettrick.  This  one  knows  so  much 
about  reference  books  that  I  am  unable  to  find  anything 
to  teach  her,  and  in  order  to  get  her  off  my  hands  for  a  few 
hours,  so  I  can  do  necessary  work,  I  have  actually  had  to  try 
to  '  stump '  her  with  difficult  questions,  well  known  to  reference 
librarians,  and  usually  requiring  hours  of  research.  But  does  it 
work  ?  Not  with  Miss  Haskyns  !  She  noses  out  the  information 
in  a  little  while,  and  comes  up  bright  and  smiling  with  :  '  I  found 
it,  Mr.  Fernald !  It  was  in  Darius  Quimby's  Encyclopedia  on 
Gothic  Horticulture,  and  there  is  another  book  about  it  by 
Peleg  Warmbatte — they  have  a  copy  in  the  British  Museum. 
What  shall  I  do  now  ?  '  Miss  Haskyns  was  under  the  tutelage 
of  Mr.  Vincent,  the  head  of  the  bindery,  for  two  days  at  the 
beginning  of  the  week.  On  the  afternoon  of  the  second  day  Mr. 
Vincent  was  seen  tearing  through  the  stacks  at  high  speed.  He 
darted  into  the  cataloguer's  room,  and  to  the  astonishment  of 


60  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

Miss  Carey  and  her  myrmidons,  jumped  behind  the  door.  The 
cause  of  his  fright  was  seen  in  a  moment,  when  Miss  Haskyns 
dashed  through  the  room,  hot  on  his  trail.  She  had  learned  all 
about  book-binding  in  forty-eight  hours,  and  was  hungry  for 
more.  Mr.  Vincent  went  home  that  night  with  a  nervous  attack 
and  has  not  yet  returned.  " 

"  I  had  an  agreeable  hour  early  this  evening  with  Admiral 
Bates.  He  is  writing  a  book  on  deep-sea  soundings,  on  which 
he  is  an  accepted  authority.  We  haven't  many  books  which  can 
help  him,  but  he  knows  exactly  what  we  have,  and  he  never 
looks  them  over  with  snorts  of  contempt  ( like  old  Professor 
Gideon,  the  Greek-coin  man  )  only  to  declare  that  he  'supposes 
he  will  have  to  go  to  Washington  to  look  it  up  '.  The  Admiral 
wears  a  kind  of  pith  helmet  (  I  suppose  it  is  a  pith  helmet ;  I 
never  met  one  outside  of  the  stories  of  Kipling  or  Richard  Hard- 
ing Davis),  and  in  the  daytime  carries  a  green-lined  umbrella. 
He  has  had  me  help  him  search  out  some  facts  about  a  number 
of  ocean-exploring  voyages,  and  I  can  talk  quite  learnedly  on  the 
various  '  deeps ',  and  so  forth.  Most  of  the  book  writers  who 
come  in  are  either  very  fussy,  or  rather  high  and  mighty,  so  the 
Admiral,  like  his  subject,  is  refreshing.  " 

"  We  have  had  a  rather  curious  experience,  lasting  over  three 
days,  with  a  man  who  was  deeply  concerned  over  the  threatened 
extinction  of  the  American  bison,  or  buffalo.  He  was  always  very 
indignant  if  one  called  it  the  '  buffalo  ',  and  rebuked  me  sharply 
for  committing  that  error.  He  arrived  in  the  reading-room  one 
afternoon  and  delivered  an  impassioned  address  on  the  neglect 
of  the  American  Government  toward  this  animal.  I  was  under 
the  impression  that  something  had  been  done  for  the  buffaloes 
— -I  mean  bisons — but  he  assured  me  that  it  was  totally  inade- 
quate. He  said  that  he  was  the  owner  of  a  large  herd  ( the 
second  largest  in  the  United  States  )  of  these  interesting  creatures, 
and  that  he  was  on  his  way  to  Washington  to  arouse  Congress 


THE  MAN   BEHIND  THE  ENCYCLOPEDIA  61 


to  take  steps  in  the  matter.  He  became  so  eloquent, and  described 
in  such  pathetic  terms  the  condition  of  this  country  when  it  should 
awake  to  find  itself  absolutely  unbuffaloed,  that  I  became  quite 
agitated,  and  found  him  all  the  books  and  articles  that  the  library 
contained  on  the  subject.  He  came  in  again  next  morning  and 
aroused  my  assistant,  Miss  Bixby,  to  a  state  of  acute  distress  by 
picturing  to  her  startled  vision  the  sad  moment  when  the  last 
buffalo  should  be  gathered  to  his  forefathers.  She  afterwards 
confessed  that  she  was  somewhat  surprised  when  he  borrowed 
a  quarter  of  her  to  get  some  luncheon,  but  she  let  him  have  it, 
for  it  struck  her  as  rather  noble  that  he  should  be  travelling  about 
the  country  almost  penniless,  rather  than  sell  one  of  the  magnifi- 
cent buffaloes  with  which  his  ranch  in  Montana  was  stocked.  She 
said  she  went  out  to  the  Zoo  that  afternoon  and  regarded  the 
two  buffaloes  there  with  renewed  interest.  " 

n  From  Miss  Bixby  the  man  passed  on  into  the  office  of  Mr. 
Dwight,  where  he  waxed  positively  lyric  over  the  buffalo  and 
his  dwindling  grandeur.  Mr.  Dwight  is  a  supporter  of  the  Aubu- 
don  Society,  and  he  plasters  the  whole  front  of  the  library  with 
colored  pictures  of  birds,  though  he  is  totally  unable  himself  to 
tell  a  guinea-hen  from  a  cock-robin.  He  became  instantly  aroused 
in  behalf  of  the  buffalo  and  I  was  forthwith  commanded  to 
compile  a  bibliography  of  buffaloes.  That  is  his  panacea — bib- 
liography. Mr.  Dwight  is  a  good  man,  and  a  learned  librarian, 
but  I  cannot,  at  times,  help  feeling  that  he  places  an  undue 
amount  of  trust  on  bibliography  as  a  remedy  for  the  ills  that  beset 
mankind.  When  the  Messina  earthquake  occurred,  he  was  ter- 
ribly distressed  by  the  suffering,  until  he  had  typewritten  a  bib- 
liography of  earthquakes.  After  that  he  leaned  back  in  his  chair, 
and,  I  verily  believe,  felt  convinced  that  he  had  taken  no  small 
share  in  improving  conditions  in  Sicily. " 

n  Well,  at  any  rate,  it  was  not  very  difficult  to  please  him  in 
this  matter.    For  the  rest  of  that  day  there  was  nothing  but 


62  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

buffaloes.  The  following  day  the  owner  of  the  herd  returned 
again  and  was  rapidly  getting  the  whole  library  staff  excited  on  the 
subject,  when  two  men,  who  had  driven  up  in  a  closed  carnage, 
entered  the  library.  They  sought  out  the  buffalo  man,  and  one 
of  them  got  him  into  the  carriage,  while  the  other  told  Miss  Carter 
that  he  ( the  buffalo  man  )  had  recently  escaped  from  a  private 
sanatarium,  and  that  he  had  never  been  west  of  Utica  in  his 
life.  How  or  why  he  became  interested  in  buffaloes  nobody  could 
say,  but  I  will  certify  that  it  was  a  topic  on  which  his  conversa- 
tion was  '  convincing  '.  " 

11  The  ethics  of  librarians  taking  tips  is  a  subject  on  which  I 
meditate  a  '  paper  '  for  some  library  publication.  I  do  not  mean 
tips  on  the  stock  market,  nor  on  the  races,  but  tips  of  the  kind 
which  you  give  to  waiters.  I  say  you  give  them,  for  it  is  charged 
against  librarians,  by  hotel  employees,  that  they  do  not  give  tips. 
How  should  they  ?  When  their  remuneration  becomes  equal  to 
that  of  the  waiters,  perhaps  they  may.  But  a  man  for  whom  I 
looked  up  a  point  about  the  registration  of  dentists  in  this  State 
( it  took  me  half  an  hours  hunting  )  brought  the  book  back  to  my 
desk,  and  slipped  me  something  wrapped  in  a  bit  of  paper.  He 
went  out  instantly,  and  when  I  had  opened  the  paper  I  found 
that  the  object  was  a  ten-cent  piece  !  I  believe  that  Anthony 
Trollope  was  once  given  sixpence  for  escorting  some  German 
royalty  through  the  post  office,  and  I  know  how  he  felt.  Ten 
cents !  Had  he  made  the  insult  sufficiently  great,  as  Pooh-Bah 
said,  I  might  have  swallowed  it,  but  I  think  I  shall  contribute 
that  dime  toward  the  distressed  buffaloes." 

"  Only  this  evening  1  made  a  painful  discovery  about  one  of 
our  oldest  and  most  valued  readers.  He  has  been  coming  in  for 
months — years,  perhaps — -and  he  always  asks  for  one  book. 
1  Plato's  Republic ' ,  in  the  original,  mind  you,  and  in  one  of 
those  miserable  little  German  editions.  He  will  have  no  other, 
and   on  one  occasion   when  his  pet  copy  was  out  and   Miss 


THE  MAN   BEHIND  THE  ENCYCLOPEDIA  63 


Bixby  offered  him  an  attractive,  annotated  edition  he  became 
perfectly  furious.  While  it  is  being  brought  he  amuses  himself 
with  illustrated  periodicals.  When  it  comes,  he  retires  into  a 
corner  and  ( apparently  )  reads  Plato  with  burning  devotion 
for  hours  at  a  time.  He  has  become  an  institution ;  I  told 
Mr.  Dwight  about  him  and  he  was  simply  entranced.  He  came 
into  the  reading-room  and  looked  at  the  Plato  man,  and  rubbed 
his  hands  with  glee.  I  think  he  meditated  having  the  man's 
picture  taken  to  put  in  the  report.  Tonight  1  happened  to  pass 
behind  the  man,  looking  for  some  book,  when  I  was  over- 
whelmed to  notice  that  he  had  Plato  upside  down !  I  thought 
perhaps  it  was  an  accident  and  that  he  had  gone  to  sleep — but 
no,  there  were  distinct  thumb-marks  on  the  top  of  the  page  that 
showed  that  he  always  held  the  book  that  way.  It  was  quite 
worn  and  tattered  in  that  spot.  I  went  around  in  front  of  him  and 
looked  at  his  eyes — they  seemed  to  be  wide  open,  and  they 
were  fixed  on  the  pages.  After  I  got  back  to  my  desk  I  looked 
at  him  now  and  again,  but  I  never  saw  him  turn  a  leaf  in  an 
hour.  What  joy  he  finds  in  glaring  at  a  Greek  text,  upside  down, 
for  hours  at  a  time  is  beyond  me.  Is  he  really  asleep,  with  his 
eyes  open?  Or  does  he  put  himself  through  all  that  weariness 
just  for  the  sake  of  the  few  minutes  he  spends  on  the  illustrated 
papers  before  Plato  comes  ?  If  so,  why  on  earth  does  he  think 
it  necessary  to  make  this  classical  bluff  as  though  it  were  a  shame- 
ful thing  to  look  at  Harper's  Weekly  and  the  Literary  Digest  ? 
1  have  known  people  to  go  to  lengths  almost  as  wild  as  that. 
Or  is  he  trying  to  hypnotize  himself  ?  What  do  you  think  ?  I 
will  give  you — let  me  see  —  I  will  give  you  the  ten-cent  piece 
I  got  as  a  tip,  for  a  satisfactory  answer." 


AN   AMATEUR'S  NOTIONS  OF   BOYS' 
BOOKS.  * 


In  the  book  by  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse  called  "  Father  and  Son  " 
there  occurs  the  following  anecdote  told  of  a  boy  eight  or  nine 
years  of  age.  The  boy's  parents  left  him  very  much  to  himself, 
and  like  other  boys  he  found  his  way  into  the  garret : 

"  The  garret  was  a  fairy  place.  It  was  a  low  lean-to,  lighted 
from  the  roof.  It  was  wholly  unfurnished,  except  for  two  objects, 
an  ancient  hat-box  and  a  still  more  ancient  skin-trunk.  The  skin- 
trunk  was  absolutely  empty,  but  the  inside  of  the  lid  of  it  was 
lined  with  sheets  of  what  I  now  know  to  have  been  a  sensa- 
tional novel.  It  was,  of  course,  a  fragment,  but  I  read  it,  kneeling 
on  the  bare  floor,  with  indescribable  rapture.  It  will  be  recol- 
lected that  the  idea  of  fiction,  of  a  deliberately  invented  story, 
had  been  kept  from  me  with  entire  success.  I  therefore  implicitly 
believed  the  tale  in  the  lid  of  the  trunk  to  be  a  true  account  of 
the  sorrows  of  a  lady  of  title,  who  had  to  flee  the  country,  and 
who  was  pursued  into  foreign  lands  by  enemies  bent  upon  her 
ruin.  Somebody  had  an  interview  with  a  '  minion  '  in  a  '  mask  ' ; 
1  went  downstairs  and  looked  up  those  words  in  Bailey's 
'  English  Dictionary ',  but  was  left  in  darkness  as  to  what  they 
had  to  do  with  the  lady  of  title.  This  ridiculous  fragment  filled 
me  with  delicious  fears ;  I  fancied  that  my  mother,  who  was  out 
so  much,  might  be  threatened  by  dangers  of  the  same  sort ; 

*  Read  at  the  convention  of  the  American   Library  Association,  Lake  Min- 
netonka,  Minn.,  June,  1908. 


AN  AMATEUR'S  NOTIONS  OF  BOYS'  BOOKS         65 

and  the  fact  that  the  narrative  came  abruptly  to  an  end,  in  the 
middle  of  one  of  its  most  thrilling  sentences,  wound  me  up  almost 
to  a  disorder  of  wonder  and  romance." 

A  few  years  later  he  came  into  contact  with  other  works  of 
fiction.  His  father  declined  to  allow  him  to  read  the  Waverly 
Novels  on  the  ground  that  those  tales  gave  false  and  disturbing 
pictures  of  life,  and  would  lead  away  his  attention  from  heavenly 
things.  But  Scott's  poems  were  permitted,  and  stranger  still, 
under  the  circumstances,  the  novels  of  Dickens.  Mr.  Gosse 
writes  :  "  I  recollect  that  my  step-mother  showed  some  surprise 
at  this,  and  that  my  father  explained  to  her  that  Dickens  '  exposes 
the  passion  of  love  in  a  ridiculous  light '.  She  did  not  seem  to 
follow  this  recommendation  which  indeed  tends  to  the  ultra- 
subtle,  but  she  procured  for  me  a  copy  of '  Pickwick '  by  which  I 
was  instantly  and  gloriously  enslaved.  My  shouts  of  laughing  at 
the  richer  passages  were  almost  scandalous,  and  led  to  my  being 
reproved  for  disturbing  my  father  while  engaged,  in  an  upper 
room,  in  the  study  of  Gods  Word.  I  must  have  expended 
months  in  the  perusal  of  '  Pickwick ',  for  I  used  to  rush  through 
a  chapter,  and  then  read  it  over  again  very  slowly,  word  for 
word,  and  then  shut  my  eyes  to  realize  the  figures  and  the  action. 
1  suppose  no  child  will  ever  again  enjoy  that  rapture  of  unre- 
sisting humorous  appreciation  of  '  Pickwick  '.  I  felt  myself  to  be 
in  the  company  of  a  gentleman  so  extremely  funny  that  I  began 
to  laugh  before  he  began  to  speak ;  no  sooner  did  he  remark 
1  the  sky  was  dark  and  gloomy,  the  air  was  damp  and  raw  ',  than 
I  was  in  fits  of  laughter." 

1  have  quoted  these  passages  because  they  form  one  of  the 
latest  published  accounts  of  a  common  experience — a  boy's 
enthralment  by  imaginative  literature.  While  it  is  safe  to  suppose 
that  few  boys  begin  their  acquaintance  with  fiction  through 
tales  like  that  of  the  minion  in  a  mask,  or,  on  the  other  hand, 
are  able  so  early  to  enjoy  Pickwick,  yet  the  emotion  is  much  the 


66  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

same  whatever  the  yam.  There  is  nothing  like  it.  A  boy's  first 
trip  to  the  land  of  story-books— it  is  like  the  first  island  landfall 
described  in  Stevenson's  "  South  Seas "  and  all  the  other  won- 
derful sunrises  in  fact  and  in  romance.  It  is  the  privilege  of  many 
of  the  members  of  this  Association  to  start  boys,  if  not  on  their 
first  trip  to  the  land  of  wonders,  at  least  on  early  voyages.  The 
privilege  is  more  highly  valued  than  it  used  to  be,  and  more 
wisely  exercised.  And  it  is  well  that  it  should  be  appreciated, 
for  of  all  the  tasks  that  fall  to  librarians,  this  is  one  of  the  pleas- 
antest.  Some  of  us  are  charmed  to  have  drawn  the  shop-girl 
from  the  level  plains  of  Laura  Jean  Libby  to  the  altitudes  of 
Mr.  Howells.  Others  thrill  with  delight  at  capturing  a  genuine 
"  workingman "  and  at  sending  him  away  enraptured  with 
Trautwine's  "Civil  Engineer's  Pocket-book  ".  To  me  these  joys 
seem  pale,  indeed,  compared  with  opening  the  magic  casements 
for  others,  and  living  over  again,  in  one  moment,  the  hours  of 
happiness. 

The  small  boy  (  and  perhaps,  the  small  girl,  but  I  do  not  claim 
to  know  much  about  her  )  is  almost  the  only  person  left  who  is 
allowed  to  read  for  the  pure  fun  of  the  thing.  Those  of  us  who 
are  not  engaged  in  an  unblushing  assault  upon  romance  and 
fiction,  are  sheepishly  apologizing  for  it.  We  are  patting  Dickens 
and  Thackeray,  forsooth,  upon  the  back,  and  assuring  them 
that  they  are  pretty  good  fellows,  after  all.  Led  on  by  the 
necessity  of  appeasing  "  practical "  trustees,  we  admit  that  we  do 
have  novels  in  our  libraries,  yes,  and  we  are  not  ashamed  of  it 
either  ;  but  then,  we  have  plenty  of  really  valuable  books  that  tell 
how  to  dig  post  holes,  and  shingle  roofs.  A  magazine  editor,  in 
a  moment  of  idleness,  writes  a  space-filler  alleging  that  libraries 
haven't  as  many  books  about  potato  bugs  and  traction  engines 
as  they  should  have,  and  a  chill  goes  down  the  spine  of  the 
entire  American  Library  Association.  Of  course,  grown-ups  do 
not  read  novels  any  longer  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  it.  They  do 


AN  AMATEURS  NOTIONS  OF  BOYS'  BOOKS         67 

it  because  they  are  taking  a  course  in  English  prose  fiction,  or 
they  do  it  for  n  general  culture "  or  "  education  ",  or  some  other 
noble  purpose.  And  librarians  read  them  to  see  if  they  are  all 
right  for  other  people  to  read.  So  in  the  rising  tide  of  utilita- 
rianism and  pose  there  remains  one  small  island,  upon  which  is 
seated  the  small  boy  —  almost  the  only  honest  reader  we  have 
left. 

It  is  good  to  know  that  he  is  encouraged.  The  change  has 
come  in  recent  years.  I  can  remember  a  librarian  who  always 
insisted  on  my  taking  home  a  book  called  "  Spectacles  for  Young 
Eyes ".  He  wished,  you  see,  to  fit  me  out  with  eye-glasses  before 
the  natural  course  of  misfortune  did  so.  As  I  was  afraid  of  him,  I 
often  took  the  book  home ;  and,  as  soon  as  I  dared,  returned  it, 
— unread.  There  were  no  children's  librarians  then,  or  I  might 
have  fared  better.  Improvements  have  been  made  in  the  treat- 
ment of  boys  in  libraries,  and  improvements  have  yet  to  be  made. 

There  are  certain  axioms  concerning  boys'  books  which  it  may 
be  well  to  state.  No  one,  I  suppose,  denies  that  a  boy's  book 
must  have  action,  and  that  it  must  not  preach.  Another  opinion, 
widely  held,  but  not  everywhere  accepted,  I  am  glad  to  say,  is 
that  these  books  must  contain,  somewhere,  a  n  moral ",  and  that 
they  must,  somehow,  be  "  instructive  ".  I  am  glad  to  say  that  the 
necessity  of  the  "  moral "  is  not  everywhere  accepted,  for  it  would, 
of  course,  deprive  boys  of  some  of  their  best  books,  just  as  the 
same  requirements  would  deprive  adults  of  many  of  the  noblest 
works  of  literature.  As  for  the  "  instructive  "  element,  it  would 
seem  to  need  no  argument  that  the  schools  are  cramming 
children  too  much  already ;  that  libraries  are  now  assisting  in 
school  work  (  not  necessarily  in  the  cramming  )  and  that  if  every 
story-book  chocolate-drop  must  be  accompanied  by  its  cod-liver 
oil  of  n  instruction ",  there  is  precious  little  joy  left  in  life.  Few 
libraries  object  to  "  Treasure  Island ",  but  how,  except  by  the 
veriest  cant,  do  you  find  either  a  "  moral "  or "  instruction  "  in  it  ? 


68  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

If  a  boy's  book  is  to  have  action  it  will  usually  deal  with  one 
of  three  things, — war,  sport  or  travel.  Some  persons  would 
exclude  war  from  the  list, —  I  believe  that  a  well-meaning  gen- 
tleman returned  only  last  summer  from  a  European  trip  spent  in 
a  vain  endeavor  to  induce  the  makers  of  toy-soldiers  to  desist 
from  their  diabolical  trade.  It  may  be  questioned  whether  the 
influence  of  certain  books  has  not  been  exaggerated.  Certainly, 
"  dime-novels "  have  received  more  than  their  fair  amount  of 
blame.  They  have  been  made  a  scape-goat  when  the  real 
cause  of  a  boy's  misdoings  lay  far  deeper.  They  are  cheap  and 
frequently  dull,  and  no  one  wishes  to  see  them  in  the  public 
libraries.  The  amount  of  horror  they  cause  many  worthy  people 
is,  however,  absurd,  and  is  frequently  founded  upon  a  complete 
ignorance  of  their  contents. 

An  author  who  combines  adventure  with  instruction  in  a 
curious  fashion  is  Captain  Mayne  Reid.  Some  one  has  lately 
described  his  method.  He  will  end  a  chapter,  said  this  writer, 
with  words  after  this  fashion :  "  There  was  a  rustling  in  the 
bushes,  a  low  growl,  and  then  the  bushes  parted  before  a  terrible, 
hairy  form.  Jack  gazed  upon  the  open,  foam-flaked  jaws,  the  sav- 
age teeth,  the  glaring  eyes.  There  was  no  doubt  about  it.  With 
his  last  cartridge  spent,  Jack  was  confronted  by  that  terror  of  the 
Rockies,  the  Grizzly  Bear. "  So  ends  chapter  1 2,  and  you 
naturally  turn  the  page  in  great  excitement  to  see  how  Jack  got 
out  of  this  difficulty.  But  chapter  1  3  begins,  "  The  Grizzly 
Bear  (  Ursus  horribilis  Americanus  )  is  an  hybernating  animal ", — 
and  so  on  for  the  entire  chapter,  about  the  manners  and  cus- 
toms of  the  bear,  while  he  and  Jack  are  left  glaring  at  each 
other,  and  you  are  in  the  most  painful  suspense.  But  the  charm 
of  this  method  is  that  all  this  "  instructive  n  matter  is  in  a  lump, 
and  you  can  skip  right  ahead  to  chapter  I  4,  and  find  out  how 
Jack  slew  the  bear.  For  those  whose  interest  lies  chiefly  in  facts, 
I  may  say  that  I  have  been  told  by  a  man  in  a  position  to  know, 


AN  AMATEUR'S  NOTIONS  OF  BOYS'  BOOKS         69 

that  Mayne  Reid's  statements  about  the  wild  lands  that  his 
books  describe  have  never  been  found  in  any  important  degree 
inaccurate. 

Do  boys  read  Jules  Verne  now  ?  There  has  been  more  or 
less  talk  about  his  being  supplanted  by  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  but 
I  cannot  believe  that  boys  would  prefer  the  Englishman.  I  used 
to  think  Captain  Nemo  the  most  magnificent  of  mysterious 
heroes.  Jules  Verne  had  a  gallery  of  wooden  characters,  but 
their  adventures  were  passing  fine.  I  was  very  proud  of  a  note 
which  I  once  received  from  him,  in  reply  to  one  which  I 
addressed  to  him  in  the  French  of  Stratford-atte-Bowe.  The 
books  of  Horatio  Alger  and  his  school  do  not,  I  believe,  meet 
the  approval  of  the  modern  children's  librarian.  I  cannot  shed 
any  tears  over  his  loss,  for  only  one  of  his  was  familiar  to  me. 
I  should  be  sorry  to  see  Harry  Castlemon  packed  off,  however, 
and  it  does  not  seem  that  the  librarians  who  banish  Alger  and 
Optic  have  a  very  strong  position.  There  are  not  many  to 
take  their  places.  Mr.  Trowbridge  is  still  in  favor,  as  he  cer- 
tainly should  be,  with  his  two  excellent  stories, — "  Cudjo's 
Cave  "  and  n  The  Three  Scouts." 

The  chief  appeal  that  is  made  for  the  works  of  the  late  Mr. 
Henty  is  that  certain  things  can  be  got  "  out  of "  them.  What  I 
got  out  of  the  few  I  tried  to  read  was  weariness  of  the  flesh. 
With  their  everlasting  prefaces  beginning  "  My  Dear  Lads  "  and 
their  stereotyped  heroes,  they  covered  a  period  from  the  dawn 
of  time  down  to  yesterday  afternoon,  and  they  blazed  a  trail  of 
earnest  mediocrity.  Lowell  says  of  Cooper's  Indians  that  they 
are  only  Natty  Bumppo  daubed  over  with  red.  Mr.  Henty's 
heroes  are  one  youth  with  a  variety  of  costumes  that  might  make 
the  German  Emperor  envious.  If  Mr.  Henty  had  been  alive  at 
the  time  of  the  California  earthquake,  I  suppose  there  would 
have  been  a  volume  from  his  pen  within  two  days  called  "With 
Funston   in  'Frisco ",  and  there  would   have   been   a  deal   of 


70  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

useful  information  in  it.  I  believe  that  many  boys  read  the 
Henty  books  and  like  them,  so  it  is  a  pleasure  to  know  that  they 
are  considered  "  educative "  and  not  likely  to  be  cast  out. 

The  two  best  books  for  American  boys  are  "  Huckleberry 
Finn  "  and  "  Tom  Sawyer  ".  There  is  a  determined  attempt  in 
many  libraries  to  keep  boys  from  reading  them.  Like  many 
attempts  it  is  well-meaning,  and  like  many  well-meaning  attempts 
it  is  entirely  mistaken.  In  its  inception  and  progress  it  has  been 
largely  a  feminine  movement.  Nothing  more  clearly  demon- 
strates the  need  for  men  librarians  to  take  an  interest  in  boys' 
books ;  nothing  shows  better  how  women  often  fail  to  realize 
that  boys  and  girls  cannot  be  judged  by  one  standard.  Those 
who  know  and  love  "  Huckleberry  Finn  "  do  not  need  to  hear 
it  praised.  They  realize  that  its  author  knew  boys  as  very  few 
have  done.  They  know  that  it  has  furnished  the  inspiration  for 
a  number  of  more  or  less  successful  imitators.  Mr.  Kenneth 
Grahame  and  Mr.  Kipling  have  both  drawn  upon  it  and  the 
best  parts  of  Mr.  Barrie's  delicious  play  "  Peter  Pan "  owe  a 
great  debt  to  it.  It  is  literature  in  a  high  sense,  because  it  is  a 
transcript  of  life.  It  represents  boys  not  as  Sunday  School 
teachers  wish  them  to  be,  but  as  they  are,  and  those  who  con- 
demn it  for  this  reason  must  also,  to  be  consistent,  condemn  the 
great  realistic  novels  for  adults.  Some  of  its  passages  are  never 
to  be  forgotten, — the  description  of  Colonel  Grangerford  is  as 
vivid  a  bit  of  writing  as  Thackeray's  famous  picture  of  Beatrix 
descending  the  stair-case.  Of  course,  it  must  be  admitted  that 
there  are  lapses  from  the  best  taste  in  it,  and  a  few  things  that 
we  could  wish  omitted.  But  there  is  no  great  writer  of  whom 
this  is  not  true,  and  for  the  mind  that  sees  nothing  in  the  book 
but  vulgarity,  what  can  be  said,  except  that  it  indicates  a  prudery 
that  would  have  probably  abolished  Shakespeare  on  account 
of  a  few  passages  obiectionable  to  modern  taste.  Children's 
departments  may  condemn  or  "  restrict "  the  book,  but  it  will 


AN  AMATEUR'S  NOTIONS  OF  BOYS"  BOOKS         71 


merely  have  the  effect  of  sending  the  boys  where  they  can  get 
it, — either  the  adults'  department  of  the  same  library,  or  else- 
where. 

I  have  indicated  a  belief  that  certain  improvements  are  yet  to 
be  made  in  the  treatment  of  boys  in  libraries.  One  of  these  is  a 
frank  acknowledgment  of  the  fact  that  books  for  entertainment 
are  books  for  entertainment,  and  need  not  be  sugar-coated  pills 
covering  the  medicine  of  "  instruction "  or  "  morals  ".  The  Puri- 
tan idea  is  long-lived,  but  there  is  no  more  reason  for  insisting 
that  books  read  for  fun  shall  have  a  "  moral "  wrapped  up  in 
them  than  in  compelling  boys  before  going  in  swimming  to  listen 
to  a  lecture  on  the  theory  of  displacement  of  fluids.  Men  should 
have  more  to  say  in  the  choice  of  boys'  books,  and  there  should 
be  more  independence  of  judgment  in  the  matter  by  both  sexes. 
I  have  seen  indications  that  the  condemnation  of  a  book  by  one 
or  two  persons  prominent  in  children's  libraries  carries  such 
weight  as  to  lead  others  to  ascribe  the  most  fearful  characteristics 
to  the  book  without  themselves  really  knowing  much  about  it. 
Books  that  may  horrify  or  frighten  little  girls  do  not  necessarily 
frighten  or  harm  little  boys, — a  fact  not  everywhere  patent  to 
children's  librarians.  Yet  it  must  be  said,  by  one  seeking  to  be 
fair,  that  the  children's  librarian  of  today  is  almost  universally 
more  sane  and  broad-minded  than  the  librarian,  either  man  or 
woman,  of  a  past  generation,  and  moreover,  that  there  occa- 
sionally arise  men,  who  for  prudishness  surpass  the  most  finical 
woman  who  ever  existed. 

My  strongest  appeal  is  for  the  boy  who  reads  "  for  fun "  and 
tastes  one  of  the  great  joys  of  life.  A  boy  who  was  not  very  old 
eighteen  years  ago  recalls  capturing  a  certain  English  magazine 
which  contained  a  story  by  his  favorite  writer.  To  make  sure 
of  reading  it  undisturbed  he  sneaked  it  away  from  the  other  boys 
who  used  to  play  in  the  garden  of  that  house  on  summer  evenings, 
and   climbed  up   into   a   cherry    tree.     The    twilight   and   his 


72  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

insecure  position  probably  added  to  the  effect  of  the  story,  but 
he  is  very  sure  that  if  he  could  have  his  choice  between  that 
hour  over  again  or  an  election  as  librarian  of  the  British  Museum, 
the  trustees  of  the  Museum  would  have  to  look  for  some  one 
else. 

We  may  fancy  that  a  crowd  of  boys  once  followed  an  old 
blind  man  about  the  streets  of  a  seaport  town.  The  old  man 
told,  or  perhaps  sang,  in  the  custom  of  the  day,  the  most  won- 
derful stories  about  fighting  men,  who  had  crossed  the  seas,  and 
fought  for  ten  years  about  the  walls  of  a  great  city. 

Probably  there  were  in  that  town  persons  who  became 
alarmed  at  the  spectacle.  They  went  to  the  boys  and  said  :  "  Do 
not  listen  to  this  old  beggar  any  longer.  I  am  afraid  you  will 
get  a  taste  for  fighting.  These  are  dangerous  stories, — they  may 
lead  you  to  form  an  Achilles  Club,  and  sail  off  to  fight  with 
foreigners.  Besides,  what  he  says  is  probably  not  true.  Come 
over  and  listen  while  some  one  or  other  talks  about  the  habits 
of  the  honey-bees,  or  hear  what  the  great  philosopher  Whalsis- 
name  has  to  say  about  cosmos.  The  sandal-maker  who  lives 
down  by  the  wharf  has  invented  a  new  way  to  fasten  sandals, 
— come  down  and  learn  how  that  is  done.  These  things  would 
be  useful  and  instructive — not  full  of  false  and  dangerous  ideas 
of  life,  such  as  the  tales  this  blind  man  tells." 

But  the  boys  kept  on  following  the  blind  man  just  the  same, 
for  they  didn't  have  to  learn  what  aorist  passive  means,  nor  yet 
iota  subscript,  before  they  understood  him.  He  spoke  their  own 
language,  and  they  wanted  to  know  whether  Hector  or  Achilles 
came  out  on  top.  They  were  just  as  much  interested  in  all 
these  adventures  as  the  boys  of  another  country  thousands  of 
years  later  are  to  hear  of  a  boy  and  a  negro  slave  who  floated 
down  the  Mississippi  on  a  raft  and  had  exciting  adventures  on 
the  way.  And  meanwhile  we  have  a  new  set  of  theories  about 
the  honey-bees  ;  the  great  philosopher  Whatsisname  has  had  his 


AN  AMATEUR'S  NOTIONS  OF  BOYS'  BOOKS         73 


idea  about  cosmos  upset  and  reinstated  five  or  six  times,  and  the 
wonderful  invention  of  the  sandal-maker  is  entirely  lost,  and 
would  not  do  us  much  good  if  it  were  found.  But  the  old  blind 
man's  stories,  fictitious  as  they  may  be,  and  bloody  as  they 
undoubtedly  are,  survive  ;  and  the  hearts  of  boys  are  hungry  still 
for  other  stories  like  them. 


THE  SQUARE  PEG 


When  one  of  the  library  magazines  announces  that  a 
young  gentleman,  recently  graduated  from  a  library  school,  has 
1  accepted  "  a  position  in  this  or  that  library  the  uninitiated  might 
think  that  the  whole  thing  had  been  very  simple.  One  fancies 
the  young  man  sitting  quietly  at  home,  while  various  celebrated 
librarians  call  upon  him  and  urge  him  to  give  them  the  benefit 
of  his  distinguished  services.  One  man,  at  least,  had  a  slightly 
different  experience,  and  he  has  consented  to  relate  it  for  our 
benefit. 

1  The  summer  that  I  left  the  library  school  I  began  to  be 
aware  that  there  were  few  points  of  attack.  Though  the  country 
was  dotted  with  libraries,  each  had  its  smiling  chief,  complacent, 
healthy,  and  long-lived.  1  stood  before  the  country,  full  of 
bibliothecal  theory,  not  wholly  innocent  of  experience,  but 
no  municipality  called  for  me,  no  college  called  aloud  my  name. 
I  yearned  to  '  bring  unto  the  people  the  books  that  belonged  to 
them ',  and  to  be  an  apostle  of  light  and  culture  in  their  midst, 
but  the  people  regarded  my  yearnings  with  a  calmness  bordering 
upon  complete  indifference." 

"  I  cast  my  vision  over  the  whole  United  States,  and  as  the 
orators  say,  from  the  Kennebec  to  the  Rio  Grande,  from  the 
Everglades  of  Florida  to  the  Whatyoumaycallems  of  Oregon 
the  word  went  forth  that  1  awaited  the  summons — a  librarian 
manque.    The  school  stood  by  me  nobly,  and  my  name  went 


THE  SQUARE  PEG  75 


east  and  west  and  south  and  north  like  the  heralds  of  Lars 
Porsena.  Replies  of  a  sort  were  quick.  I  had  not  reached 
my  home  before  a  telegram  had  arrived — a  librarian  was 
spending  a  few  days  in  New  York :  would  I  come  and  see  him 
with  a  view  to  becoming  his  assistant  ?  I  spent  a  very  hot  day 
hunting  him,  but  in  the  time  that  intervened  between  the  sending 
of  his  despatch  and  my  arrival — a  delay  for  which  I  was  in  no 
manner  to  blame,  he  had  become  convinced  that  I  was  not  the 
man  for  him,  and  had  gone,  like  great  Orion,  sloping  slowly  to 
the  West.  He  had  found  an  assistant  en  route.  The  mishap 
was  hardly  finished  before  glittering  accounts  of  a  new  library  in 
a  northeastern  town  sent  me  into  the  land  of  maple  sugar.  The 
library  —  that  is,  the  building — was  certainly  there.  A  selectman 
unlocked  it  for  me  and  showed  me  about.  There  must  have  been 
nearly  two  hundred  books — counting  magazines  as  such.  '  Well, 
he  sposed  they  might  want  a  libarian.  He  didn't  know.  Salary? 
Well,  old  Mis'  Carroll  had  been  libarian  and  she  didn't  get  no 
salary — liked  to  have  the  place  to  set  and  do  her  knittin'.  He 
sposed  the  new  libarian  ( if  Mis'  Carroll  didn  't  get  well  and  take 
it  up  again )  could  count  on  board  and  keep  anyhow.  Next 
train  for  Boston?   Oh,  it  leaves  at  four  twenty' . " 

n  That  night  the  '  library  of  my  own '  idea  did  not  seem  so 
feasible  and  I  addressed  letters  to  three  or  four  of  the  great 
libraries.  The  replies  were  all  polite  and  fiendishly  non-com- 
mittal. They  all  enclosed  blank  applications  for  me  to  fill  out. 
Some  of  these  applications  were  sufficiently  searching  in  their 
inquiries  to  fulfill  the  requirements  of  a  matriculation  at  Oxford, 
an  enlistment  in  the  army,  confirmation  in  the  Church,  and  the 
purchase  of  an  insurance  policy.  I  filled  them  all  out — it  took  a 
day  or  two — and  sent  them  in.  Meanwhile  the  hunt  went  on. 
A  Western  college  president  was  visiting  the  Atlantic  coast  in 
search  of  health  and  a  librarian.  He  cost  me  something  in 
postage  and  telegraph  tolls.    The  way  the  man  would  dart  about 


76  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

was  unbelievable.  A  telegram  would  arrive  saying  '  Meet  me 
Colonial  Club  at  12',  and  I  would  hurry  out  to  Cambridge 
only  to  find  another  message,  '  Had  to  go  back  to  New 
Rochelle,  sorry. '  Finally  I  met  him  at  Kennebunkport.  He  was 
pleasant,  and  he  gave  me  a  good  luncheon,  but  he  shook  his 
head  the  minute  he  saw  me.  '  I  didn't  know  you  were  so  young  ', 
and  that  ended  me.  I  was  frequently  under  the  accusation  of 
being  young  that  summer.  I  wondered  if  these  gentlemen  really 
expected  to  find  that  the  applicant  for  their  seventy-five-dollars- 
a-month  positions  was  a  man  sixty  years  of  age,  fresh  from  thirty 
years*  experience  as  Directeur  of  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale. 
One  of  the  great  libraries  suggested  that  I  might  come  there  and 
work  for  nothing  if  I  liked,  but  that  did  not  seem  to  be  any  im- 
provement over  filling  the  shoes  of  the  moribund  Mis'  Carroll — 
especially  as  her  library  was  only  open  Wednesday  and  Satur- 
day afternoons. " 

"  Discouraged  at  being  thought  too  young,  I  assumed  a  pair 
of  heavily  rimmed  spectacles  and  a  serious  expression  the  next 
time  I  interviewed  a  board  of  trustees.  I  was  rewarded  for  this 
effort  by  hearing  afterwards  that  the  leading  member  of  the 
board — a  lady — thought  that  I  was  altogether  too  solemn,  and 
feared  I  had  no  sense  of  humor.  One  library  found  that  my 
educational  equipment  was  not  sufficient ;  another  was  sorely 
prejudiced  against  anyone  who  had  attended  a  library  training 
school.  With  one  librarian  it  was  all  over  when  he  saw  me 
smoking.  Another,  with  whom  1  took  luncheon,  offered  me  beer, 
and  when  I  declined  on  account  of  the  heat  and  drank  iced  tea, 
he  immediately  stiffened  up,  took  his  bottle  of  beer  with  a 
sarcastic  manner  and  made  certain  remarks  which  convinced  me 
that  I  appeared  in  his  eyes  a  mere  priggish  teetotaller.  I  arose 
at  early  hours  and  galloped  to  distant  parts  of  the  state.  The 
correspondence  that  I  conducted  was,  to  say  the  least,  voluminous, 
and  friends   whom   1   named   as  references   began   to  receive 


THE  SQUARE  PEG  77 

inquiries  about  me  from  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth.  One 
of  them  got  the  impression  that  I  had  enlisted  as  a  book  agent." 
"  I  was  not  uniformly  unsuccessful,  of  course.  One  or  two 
libraries  in  far  off  places,  one  or  two  where  the  salary  was  not 
large  enough  to  attract  more  experienced  persons,  intimated  that 
they  would  receive  me  with  open  arms.  Teachers'  agencies 
pestered  me  with  correspondence.  The  fact  that  one  library 
would  consider  me  as  unavailable  for  some  quality  the  lack  of 
which  had  inspired  another  to  reject  me  was  curiously  illustrated, 
particularly  in  one  case.  A  certain  library  found  that  I  had  not 
shown  sufficient  earnestness  in  frying  to  get  a  position.  The 
reason  for  my  impassive  attitude  is  easily  explained.  I  had  just 
finished  an  active  campaign  in  another  town.  This  place  had 
just  built  a  new  library,  when  its  librarian  was  called  to  what  are 
usually  termed  '  greater  spheres  of  usefulness '.  A  large  number 
of  persons  began  to  seek  the  position.  Some  of  them — a  very 
few — were  either  librarians  or  library  school  graduates,  like 
myself.  The  rest  included  city  politicians,  teachers,  and  even 
a  retired  undertaker.  The  choice  lay  with  the  board  of  trustees, 
in  which  an  ex-officio  membership  belonged  to  the  mayor  and 
one  or  two  more  city  officials.  I  found  that  the  other  candidates 
were  calling  upon  the  trustees  like  aspirants  for  the  French 
Academy.  So  I  plunged  into  the  struggle.  I  interviewed  them 
all.  The  mayor  received  me  with  ceremony  in  his  room  of 
state.  The  president  of  the  board  of  aldermen  I  only  found  after 
a  long  search.  His  son  led  me  to  the  rear  of  the  parental  cigar 
shop  and  pointed  out  a  ladder  that  leaned  against  a  shed.  I 
ascended  the  ladder  and  found  His  Worship  painting  the  tin 
roof.  He  received  me  courteously  and  I  expounded  my  case. 
There  was  some  difficulty  in  doing  this  impressively,  however, 
for  the  shed  overlooked  a  railroad  track.  Trains  were  passing 
almost  constantly,  and  I  had  to  describe  my  attractions  in  a  series 
of  spasmodic  yells.    1  do  not  remember  that  the  library  school 


78  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

gave  one  any  instructions  how  to  convince  an  alderman  of  ones 
capabilities  in  librarianship  under  these  circumstances.  But  I 
finished  and  went  down  the  ladder — my  throat  full  of  cinders. 
I  fear  that  the  president  did  not  vote  for  me,  when  the  time  came, 
for  the  undertaker  swept  all  before  him,  and  is  librarian  even 
unto  this  day.  Perhaps  he  has  solved  the  vexed  question  that 
troubles  so  many  librarians — what  to  do  with  '  dead  books '. " 

"  This  campaign  rather  sickened  me  for  active  efforts,  and  I 
tried  the  merely  receptive  attitude,  with  the  ill  success  which  I 
have  mentioned.  At  times  I  would  stop  and  ask  myself  'What 
is  it  that  maketh  the  librarian  ?  For  some  I  am  too  young,  for 
others  too  far  gone  in  age.  I  must  either  smoke  or  not,  drink  or 
not,  be  earnest  or  frivolous,  grave  or  gay,  lively  or  severe.  Is  there 
some  divine  middle  course  that  I  have  missed  ?  What  is  it  ?  Or 
is  there  a  vast,  far-reaching  conspiracy  against  me  ?  '  I  overhauled 
the  notes  of  the  lectures  which  I  had  attended  on  the  '  Qualifi- 
cations of  a  Librarian ',  and  I  asked  myself,  is  there  any  one  of 
these  requirements  which  my  rival,  the  undertaker,  fulfills  ? 
And  with  my  hand  on  my  heart  I  answered,  '  Not  one '.  Yet 
there  he  sat,  in  his  place  of  power,  purveyor  of  knowledge  to  the 
whole  city  of  Poodelville,  while  I,  forsooth,  I,  might  howl  with- 
out, for  all  the  Poodelvillians  cared.  The  question  was  too  great 
for  me,  and  while  I  was  still  worried  by  it,  there  came  the  com- 
bination of  the  time,  the  place,  and  the  library,  which  put  my 
doubts  aside." 


MEETING  THE  PUBLIC  " 


In  the Public  Library,  Miss  Florence  Carter  is  known 

as  "  chief  of  the  circulation  division.  "  She  has  been  in  the  service 
of  the  library  twelve  years,  is  a  graduate  of  Smith,  and  has  spent  a 
year  on  one  occasion,  and  two  or  three  months  at  other  times  in 
studying  library  work  at  schools  established  for  teaching  that 
subject.  Her  duties  are  simple.  She  is  commander-in-chief  of 
twelve  women—  -some  of  them  older  than  herself,  but  most  of  them 
younger  ;  and  of  eight  boys,  of  about  the  high  school  age — pages 
or  messengers.  She  arranges  the  schedules  of  work,  and  the  work 
itself  for  these  twenty  persons  ;  keeps  a  complicated  set  of  statis- 
tics concerning  the  number  of  books  issued  each  day,  and  divi- 
ded into  about  a  dozen  classes  of  the  various  kinds  of  literature  ; 
supervises  the  mailing  of  dozens  of  notices  daily  to  persons  who 
who  have  not  returned  their  books  promptly,  or  who  have  not 
called  to  get  books  which  they  have  requested ;  represents  the 
library  to  hundreds  of  persons  who  are  unaware  of,  or  indifferent 
to  the  existence  of  a  chief  librarian  somewhere  in  an  inner 
office  ;  keeps  track  of  the  names  and  knows  something  about 
the  contents  of  the  current  books  of  the  day,  not  only  novels, 
but  history,  travel,  biography  and  art  criticism  ;  can  discuss  the 
question  whether  Mrs.  Wards  latest  heroine  is  "  convincing " 
with  an  admirer  of  that  novelist,  or  tell  a  man  when  the  library 
is  going  to  get  the  newest  edition  of  somebody's  book  on  the 
scientific  construction  of  culverts.  Also,  if  necessary,  she  takes  the 


80  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

place  of  any  one  of  her  assistants  at  the  desk,  when  that  one  is 
carried  off  amid  the  fumes  of  lavender  smelling  salts ;  teaches 
something  of  her  art  to  three  or  four  "  apprentices, "  who  are 
finding  themselves  on  the  working  side  of  a  library  desk  for  the 
first  time  ;  puts  in  a  pleasant  evening  at  home  with  the  statistics, 
two  or  three  times  a  month  ;  and  employs  other  hours  of  her  own 
time  in  looking  at  a  daily  newspaper,  six  weekly  reviews,  two 
fortnightlies,  and  about  fifteen  monthly  magazines,  all  read  pri- 
marily in  connection  with  her  work.  She  has  charge  of  between 
two  and  three  thousand  dollars  a  year,  taken  in  over  the  desks 
in  sums  of  two,  four,  or  eight  cents  at  a  time.  She  can,  moreover, 
tell  a  person  who  wants  to  write  a  "  paper "  on  "  The  Old 
Cities  of  Florida  "  and  who  has  asked  if  "  The  Confessions  of  St. 
Augustine  "  is  the  best  book  to  begin  with,  that  there  are  better 
books  for  the  purpose,  and  see  that  that  person  gets  the  better 
ones  without  experiencing  the  slightest  wound  to  his  or  her 
feelings.  She  works  eleven  months  in  the  year,  six  days  to  the 
week,  and  seven  or  eight  hours  to  the  day,  and  she  gets  almost 
as  much  salary  as  a  high-school  teacher  who  works  nine  months 
in  the  year,  five  days  to  the  week,  and  five  or  six  hours  to  the 
day. 

Of  an  afternoon  at  the  library  she  wrote  recently  to  a  friend 
as  follows :  "  Miss  Robinson  is  best  of  all  at  the  issue  desk,  for 
she  never  looses  her  head.  I  did  feel  sorry  for  her  this  afternoon 
when  Professor  Sears  came  in.  When  he  enters  the  library 
everyone  stops  and  looks  at  him.  With  his  big  slouch  hat,  white 
hair  and  whiskers  he  looks  like  Walt  Whitman ;  but  the  resem- 
blance ends  there,  for  I  believe  Whitman  was  rather  genial  in 
manner.  Professor  Sears  usually  sends  his  daughter  ahead  of 
him  in  the  morning  and  she  spends  an  hour  or  two  at  the  cata- 
logue. She  is  a  rapid  and  experienced  worker  and  she  makes 
out  a  thick  packet  of  call-slips,  which  the  professor  presents  at 
the  desk  when  he  arrives  in  the  afternoon.    On  this  particular 


MEETING  THE   PUBLIC"  81 


afternoon  he  handed  in  about  a  hundred.  Some  of  them  called 
for  the  volumes  of  a  scientific  magazine  covering  the  last  thirty- 
five  years,  and  there  were  also  a  large  number  of  reports  of  the 
Smithsonian  Institution  among  his  wants.  The  pages  brought 
them  first  in  armfuls ;  then  they  came  with  loaded  trucks. 
They  started  into  the  reading  room  with  them,  but  the  professor 
snapped  his  fingers  and  beckoned  for  them  to  be  placed  on 
the  issue  desk,  where  Miss  Robinson,  balanced  on  a  stool 
was  trying  to  keep  her  cards  and  records  straight,  and  attend 
to  the  wants  of  the  eight  or  nine  people  gathered  in  front  of 
her.  When  the  piles  of  books  began  to  look  like  so  many  Towers 
of  Babel,  she  asked  him  very  melodiously,  if  he  wouldn't  rather 
have  them  in  the  reading  room,  where  he  could  have  a  desk 
and  a  chair.  He  was  already  engaged  in  examining  one  of  them 
— his  hat  pushed  back  on  his  head,  his  walking  stick  under  his 
arm,  and  pointing  out  straight  behind  him,  and  his  spectacles 
well  down  on  his  nose.  She  had  to  repeat  her  question  twice, 
till  the  professor  raised  his  head,  looked  at  her,  grunted  like  a 
hippopotamus  rising  to  the  surface  of  the  water  and  then  went 
on  with  his  reading.  A  few  minutes  afterward  I  heard  Miss 
Barlow  pointing  out  the  professor  to  one  of  the  apprentices. 
'  That  is  the  famous  Professor  Sears  ',  she  said,  '  the  man  who 
discovered  the  moons  of  Mercury,  and  is  on  the  editorial 
board  of  sixteen  encyclopedias.  He  belongs  to  more  learned 
societies  in  Europe  than  all  the  other  people  in  America  put 
together,  and  it  takes  two  columns  of  fine  print  to  name  the  uni- 
versities that  have  given  him  honorary  degrees.  He  has  just  been 
awarded  the  Grand  Cross  of  the  Order  of  the  Dark  Brown  Eagle 
by  Kaiser  William,  and  he  has  the  manners  of  a  rhinoceros  and 
the  gentle  graciousness  of  a  polar  bear.  Whenever  he  comes  in 
you  must  let  him  have  all  he  wants,  in  any  way  he  wants  it,  for 
as  long  as  he  likes,  and  let  him  do  whatever  he  pleases  with  it, 
or  he  will  get  frightfully  angry,  and  never  come  in  again  '. " 


82  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

n  While  Miss  Robinson  was  struggling  along  in  the  shadow  of 
the  professor's  mountains  of  books,  Miss  Bixby  came  out  of  the 
reading-room,  followed  by  a  sullen  looking  little  woman  in  a 
brown  dress.  She  came  over  to  me.  n  Miss  Carter,  I  wish  you 
would  see  that  this  lady  gets  some  of  these  books.  I  have  made 
out  the  slips  for  her.  She  wants  to  study  Holland  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  and  she  won't  have  any  books  unless  they  call  it 

I  Holland1.  Most  of  them  call  it  the  Netherlands,  or  the  Low 
Countries,  or  else  Flanders  and  she  thinks  I  am  trying  to  give  her 
something  which  is  not  genuine '.  She  glanced  over  at  the 
woman,  who  was  regarding  the  catalogue  with  great  contempt, 
and  then  added, '  She's  awful ! '  With  that  Miss  Bixby  retreated 
into  the  reading-room. " 

"  I  sent  Jimmie  with  the  call-slips,  and  he  presently  returned 
with  four  or  five  of  the  books.  The  woman  had  sauntered 
slowly  over  to  one  end  of  the  desk,  opposite  to  that  at  which 
Professor  Searls  was  pursuing  his  researches,  and  I  showed  her 
the  books.  She  never  looked  straight  at  them,  nor  did  she  look 
at  me.  Instead,  she  kept  her  eyes  directed  downward,  and 
glanced  at  the  volumes  in  a  slanting  fashion.  When  she  spoke 
it  sounded  as  if  her  voice  issued  from  one  corner  of  her  mouth. 

I I  want  something  about  Holland  ',  she  remarked.  '  These  are 
about  Holland  ',  1  explained,  '  only,  most  of  the  older  books  call 
it  by  its  older  name  '.  She  pointed  to  the  heading  of  a  chapter  : 
'  That  says  Netherlands',  she  muttered  from  the  side  of  her 
mouth.  I  started  to  explain,  but  she  sidled  away,  and  I  saw 
her  a  few  minutes  later  examining  a  book  about  wild-flowers. " 

When  I  turned  around  I  found  Mr.  Doty  standing  at  my 
elbow.  Mr.  Doty  is  a  trustee  of  the  library,  and  the  only  one 
who  ever  comes  near  it,  except  when  there  is  a  meeting  of  the 
board.  His  silky  smile  was  all  ready,  and  he  shook  hands  in  his 
usual  fashion  —  holding  my  hand  some  three  or  four  times  longer 
than  was  necessary.    '  Ah,  Miss  Carter, '  he  began,  '  busy  as 


"MEETING  THE   PUBLIC"  83 


usual  —  always  busy  !  Wonderful-  -wonderful — I  don't  see  how 
you  do  it.  All  your  assistants  here,  busy  as  bees,  too !  Ah  !  it's 
a  great  work,  a  great  work — the  university  of  the  people — that 
is  what  I  call  this  library,  Miss  Carter — the  university  of  the 
people ! '  And  he  had  the  air  of  a  man  who  has  made  an 
original  and  startling  remark.  Then  he  turned  from  epigrams  to 
business.  '  But  there  is  a  little  thing  that  I  want  to  speak  to  you 
about,  Miss  Carter.  I  have  here  a  copy  of  the  Forum  which  I 
brought  from  the  reading-room.  Of  course,  I  don't  want  Miss 
Bixby  to  know  anything  about  this  '.  He  glanced  over  his 
shoulder  in  the  direction  of  the  reading-room,  and  opened  the 
magazine  binder  which  held  the  Forum.  On  the  top  of  the 
magazine  was  stamped  rather  faintly  in  blue  ink  the  words : 
'  Presented  by  Ferdinand  K.  Doty  '.  Then  he  explained : 
1  You  know  I  give  $  1  00  a  year  to  provide  magazines.  We 
subscribe  to  about  twenty  of  the  leading  periodicals  through 
this  fund.  Now,  look  at  that  stamp.  You  can  hardly  read  the 
name.  I  have  spoken  to  Dr.  Pierce  about  it,  and  he  went  to 
Miss  Bixby  in  the  matter.  That  was  three  months  ago.  It 
improved  for  a  while,  but  now  it  is  back  where  it  was  before. 
I  know  Miss  Bixby  means  to  do  well,  but  some  of  her  assistants 
must  be  getting  careless.  I  don't  wish  to  speak  to  her  myself  — 
can't  you  give  her  a  hint  ?  ' " 

"  1  promised  Mr.  Doty  that  I  would  do  what  I  could  about  it, 
and  he  smilingly  departed,  going  the  rounds  of  the  library, 
shaking  hands  ( in  his  most  lingering  manner  )  with  all  the  girls. 
As  he  left,  Edgar  came  to  me  and  said  that  Dr.  Pierce,  the 
librarian,  wished  to  see  me  in  his  office.  I  started  in  that  direction, 
but  not  before  Dr.  Pierce  came  hurrying  out  with  his  coat-tails 
flying.  '  Miss  Carter,  I  wish  you  would  look  up  to  see  what 
books  we  have  on  Holland  in  the  seventeenth  century.  Come  in 
my  office  and  see  this  lady,  she  is  going  to  study  the  subject  .  .  .  .' 
We  were  in  his  office  now  and  he  looked  round  blankly  :  '  Why, 


84  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

where  has  she  gone  ?  She  was  here  a  minute  ago  !  She  must 
have  gone  into  the  fine  arts  department ',  and  he  darted  through 
into  that  room. " 

1  When  I  got  back  to  the  desk,  a  woman  who  had  been  talk- 
ing with  Miss  Robinson  detached  herself  and  came  toward  me. 
She  was  clothed  in  a  singular  costume,  that  was  somehow  sug- 
gestive of  the  Orient,  and  I  almost  expected  to  see  that  she  wore 
sandals.  She  had  a  scarf  thrown  over  her  head  in  place  of  a  hat, 
and  her  dark  hair  was  parted  in  the  middle.  If  you  can  imagine 
George  Eliot  preparing  to  go  to  a  ball  in  the  costume  of 
Cleopatra  you  will  get  some  idea  of  what  she  looked  like.  She 
addressed  me  in  low  and  thrilling  tones.  '  Good  afternoon.  The 
young  lady  at  the  desk  told  me  you  have  charge  of  this  part  of 
the  library.  Perhaps  you  can  tell  me  what  I  am  interested  to 
learn.  I  understand  that  you  purchase  the  novels  of  the  leading 
writers  in  large  numbers,  do  you  not  ? '  I  said  that  it  was  true. 
1  Now,  when  Mrs.  Ward  produces  a  new  book,  how  many 
copies  do  you  take  ? '  1  said  that  we  buy  from  thirty  to  fifty 
copies  of  Mrs.  Ward's  books.  'And  Mrs.  Wharton?'  she 
inquired  in  solemn  tones.  '  Mrs.  Wharton  is  not  so  popular ', 
I  answered ;  '  you  understand  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  her 
novels  are  not  as  good  —  personally,  I  prefer  them,  but  she  is  not 
quite  as  popular.  Still,  we  take  nearly  as  many  '.  The  woman 
regarded  me  intently.  'And  Morton',  she  said — 'Millicent 
Morton  ? '  I  hesitated  for  a  moment,  for  I  could  not  recall 
immediately  who  Millicent  Morton  was.  Then  I  remembered  — 
of  course,  she  is  the  author  of  '  Loves  of  Long  Ago ',  '  Hand- 
clasps by  the  Firelight '  and  a  whole  line  of  intensely  sentimental 
books  that  are  usually  issued  in  padded  silk  bindings  embroidered 
with  forget-me-nots,  and  printed  on  paper  highly  decorated  with 
pink  roses  and  marguerites.  Her  works  are  said  to  sell  like  wild- 
fire, especially  among  languishing  maidens,  and  are  advertised 
as  eminently  suitable  for  '  gift-books '.     It  did  not  take  me  long 


"MEETING  THE  PUBLIC  85 


to  remember  all  this,  and  I  had  to  smile  a  little  at  Millicent 
Morton's  proximity  to  Mrs.  Wharton.  '  I  think  we  always  get  a 
copy  of  her  books',  I  said,  and  as  I  did  so  I  was  aware  that 
Miss  Barlow,  in  the  distance,  was  making  violent  signs  and 
gesticulations  at  me.  I  was  too  stupid  at  the  moment  to  realize 
what  she  meant,  however.  The  Oriental-looking  person  repeated 
with  great  astonishment :  '  You  get  a  copy — one  copy  only,  do 
I  understand  ?  And  you  buy  thirty  copies  of  Edith  Wharton  ? 
Good  heavens,  what  taste  !  Who  is  responsible  for  such  actions?1 

"At  this  moment  a  small  man  came  hurriedly  into  the  library, 
rushed  up  to  the  indignant  lady,  and  exclaimed  '  Oh,  here  you 
are !  Hurry  now,  or  we'll  be  late '.  She  turned  slowly  about, 
looked  me  over  with  what  I  suppose  was  scorn  so  withering  that 
I  ought  to  have  shrivelled  up  like  a  caterpillar  on  a  hot  shovel, 
repeated  with  great  emphasis  :  '  One  copy  !  Good  God  ! '  and 
glided  slowly  out  with  the  little  man.  Instantly  Miss  Barlow 
rushed  over  to  me.  '  Don't  you  know  who  that  is  ?  That's 
Millicent  Morton,  the  author  of  '  Loves  of  Long  Ago '  and  all 
those  other  books.  I  hope  you  didn't  tell  her  that  Dr.  Pierce 
won't  have  her  books  in  the  library — if  you  did  she'll  put  us  all 
in  her  next  novel — authors  are  always  getting  peevish  at  librarians 
and  doing  that1 ." 

"Jimmie  now  brought  me  a  note  from  Miss  Larkin,  the  children's 
librarian.  It  said :  '  I  do  wish  you  would  send  me  down  some 
books  on  Holland  in  the  seventeenth  century.  There's  a  woman 
here  after  books  about  Holland,  and  nothing  that  I  can  find  will 
satisfy  her  '.  I  was  composing  a  note  to  assure  Miss  Larkin  of 
my  deep  sympathy  when  Mrs.  J.  Pomfret  Smith  sailed  up  to  my 
desk.  She  moved  amid  a  rustle  of  silks,  and  her  hat  loomed  on 
the  horizon  —  a  thing  portentous,  like  a  child's  old-fashioned 
bathtub.  But  before  beginning  to  speak  she  saw  Dr.  Pierce  in 
his  office — the  door  was  open.  I  think  he  saw  her,  and  that  he 
would  have  retreated  into  the  wardrobe,  but  he  was  too  late. 


86  THE  LIBRARY  AND  THE  LIBRARIAN 

She  bore  down  on  him,  with  one  hand  outstretched ;  the  other 
clutching  a  mass  of  flapping  papers.  I  could  hear  her  distinctly, 
and  so  could  everybody  in  that  part  of  the  building.  '  Dr. 
Pierce  ?  Oh,  how  do  you  do  ?  I  have  never  met  you  before, 
but  I  know  Mrs.  Pierce.  And  I  have  used  the  library  for  years. 
I  often  got  books  here  when  old  Mr.  Akers  was  librarian,  but 
I  was  quite  a  girl  then,  and  I  guess  I  never  read  much  but  fairy 
books.  I  almost  always  ask  for  Miss  Anderson  when  I  come 
here ;  she  is  lovely — a  perfect  treasure — and  takes  such  pains. 
But  they  say  she's  away  on  her  vacation,  and  so  is  Miss  Hardy, 
in  the  reading-room.  Now,  I'm  going  to  read  a  paper  next 
Monday  afternoon  before  the  Twenty-Minute  Culture  Club  ;  it's 
the  first  meeting  of  the  season,  and  at  my  house.  Here's  the 
title:  "Italian  Painters  of  Cinquecento'.  I  can't  for  the  life  of 
me  find  where  Cinquecento  is,  and  I've  looked  through  all  the 
gazetteers  and  geographies  you've  got.  Mrs.  Brooks  gave  me 
the  name  of  a  lot  of  painters,  but  I  don't  believe  she  knows  much 
about  them,  or  where  they  came  from.  First,  there  is  Vassery's 
Lives  of  the  Painters  ;  then  there  is  this  Carlo  Dolce  far  Niente, 
who  lived  in  1  497,  and  painted  frescos  for  the  Bascilica  of  San 
Raphael,  whoever  he  may  be.  And  I  know  I've  read  an  article 
somewhere  about  Bambino  ;  I  wish  you  would  let  me  take  some 
book  about  him.  Oh,  yes,  I  remember  ;  he  was  a  monk  who  fell 
in  love  with  a  nun  he  was  painting,  and  instead  of  eloping  with 
her,  retired  to  a  convent  and  wrote  sonnets  about  her  all  the  rest 
of  his  life.  The  Italians  are  such  an  artistic  race,  and  their  art  is 
so  mingled  with  their  love  affairs.  There  was  someone,  I  remem- 
ber—  I  think  it  was  Ponte  Vecchio,  but  I  am  not  sure — who 
painted  a  lady's  portrait,  and  had  musicians  playing  all  the  time 
so  her  husband  wouldn't  hear  him  make  love  to  her.  Oh,  I 
remember  it  all !  You  recall  it,  don't  you,  Dr.  Pierce  ?  There 
is  a  picture,  I  saw  it  not  long  ago,  that  shows  him  meeting  her, 
and  he  has  his  hand  on  his  heart.   When  he  died  he  left  all  his 


"MEETING  THE  PUBLIC"  87 


sonnets  to  his  friend,  Vita  Nuova,  and  made  him  swear  to  bury 
them  all  in  the  lady's  coffin,  and  he  did,  and  they  weren't  dug 
up  for  a  hundred  years,  and  then  nobody  could  read  what  they 
were  about,  because  they  were  all  written  in  cipher.  Then  they 
were  published  in  the  Golden  Book  of  Venice,  and  every  year 
they  made  the  Doge  jump  into  the  sea.  Then  I  want  to  get 
a  book  about  Andrea  del  Sarto  because  it  struck  me  that  Sarto 
was  the  name  of  the  present  pope,  and  it  would  be  interesting 
to  see  if  they  are  related.   And  I  wonder  — —  ' n 


3  1158  01264  3473 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


SEP  ^9  1964 


M. 


3    0  mil|12l  1  !2!3!4 


&mm. 


50 


HMa° 


P.M. 

1516 


RECD  LD-URIJ 


Form  L9-20m-7,'61(Cl437s4)444 


3  1158  01264  3408 

P31  li 
Ccp  3^ 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    001  163  989    5 


w*.  V 


